Columns

The black dog has descended on Whitehall. Tory ministers are, as a group, at their lowest ebb since they entered government. When I saw one secretary of state this week, he stopped halfway through our meeting to say, ‘I’m sorry this is such a depressing conversation’. He then continued in the same vein. Even the normally Tiggerish Prime Minister is in a bit of an Eeyoreish mood. I’m told that he seems more tired and down than at any point since he took on the job. This funk is a result of a difficult few weeks for the government. Granny tax was followed by pastygate, which compounded the damage done by the fuel panic, which set the government up for a fall over charity tax.

There is a split in the Cameron circle. The divide is between those who think that the problems of the past few weeks have been a blip, one that will end when Boris Johnson wins in London, and those — including some of the Prime Minister’s closest friends — who fear the problems are symptoms of a disease that could cripple the government. At stake in this debate is the future strategic direction, and the potential success, of the Cameron project. The Prime Minister, ever the optimist, is in the first camp. He is inclined to think that he is experiencing a normal bout of mid-term turbulence. But some of his closest and oldest political allies are preparing to persuade him that his problems are the result of structural defects in his government.

One might think that the Cameroons would be desperate about a poll showing their leader’s personal approval rating to be the lowest it has ever been. But the Prime Minister’s negative rating, minus 27, looks positively healthy when compared to those of the other two party leaders: the same poll showed Ed Miliband at minus 41 and Nick Clegg at minus 53. We are now in an era when the public are dissatisfied with all political parties and their leaders. Ask them which of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband would make the best prime minister and 46 per cent of them say they just don’t know. This is part of a broader sense of national alienation.

Downing Street is, in the words of one senior aide, in a mood of ‘sober reflection’ about how and why so many things have gone wrong in the past fortnight. The question now is whether the government can expect more of the same for the rest of the year. The answer will turn on two elections in May, the contest for the London mayoralty and the one to choose the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. Even those in No. 10 who most dislike Boris Johnson know that his re-­election is crucial to their prospects. A Boris triumph would make the last few weeks seem like a blip rather than a permanent shift in the political landscape. If Labour can’t take the capital, there’ll be a fresh bout of speculation about Ed Miliband’s leadership.

David Cameron was in a foul mood on Monday night. ‘Cash for Cameron’, the scandal about a Tory treasurer trying to lure donors with the prospect of dinner in the Camerons’ Downing Street flat if they coughed up £250,000, is precisely the kind of story that gets under his skin. He knows that it matters, but hates the fact that it does. Part of him thinks that it is all beneath his prime-ministerial dignity. It also irritates him that he is receiving little credit for being more transparent than any of his predecessors. He tetchily said to colleagues that evening that ‘if I am anymore transparent, I’ll be telling the press when I see my own family’. But, deep down, he realises the potency of any story about the Tories and a moneyed elite.

This Budget was a reminder that political tactics alone are not enough to explain George Osborne’s actions. The most striking thing about it was the political risks that it took for economic growth. If Osborne was the polling-obsessed politician that his critics claim he is, he wouldn’t have gone near the 50p rate — nor would he have backed more toll roads. This is not to say that there isn’t a lot of politics in his political economy. Under­pinning each of Osborne’s Budgets is a desire to turn Britain back into a Conservative country, to undo Gordon Brown’s 13 years of statist social engineering. He believes, rightly, that countries with small states and large private sectors are much more likely to elect centre-right governments.