Columns

‘I don’t really worry about David and the European Court of Human Rights,’ one right-wing member of the then shadow cabinet told me months before the last election. After a fortifying mouthful of steak, he continued: ‘The truth is that, whatever the policy is now, as soon as the court tells him he can’t deport some terrorist and the papers start giving it to him in the neck, he’ll go absolutely mental and insist on reform.’ The moment has arrived. Abu Qatada — believed to have been the intellectual inspiration for several terrorist groups and, at one point, Osama bin Laden’s ambassador in Europe — is to be freed on bail because of a ruling by the court in Strasbourg. The government is trying to appeal against the verdict.

Bob Diamond, the chief executive of Barclays bank, is not a man inclined to bend to the public mood. ‘There was a period of remorse and apology for banks,’ he told MPs this time last year. ‘I think that period needs to be over.’ His remarks presaged the coming confrontation between Diamond and Parliament over the Barclays bonus pool. He may think the bankers’ period of remorse and apology should be over but MPs and the public do not. The Labour leadership, sensing a political opening, is determined to have the Barclays bonuses debated on the floor of the House. We will soon find out where this Diamond scores on the Mohs scale of hardness.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. The Tories used to joke that after a year and a half in office they would be the most unpopular government in history. Instead, they find themselves five points ahead in the polls. To their surprise, and Labour’s consternation, they are in a far stronger position now than they were at the last election. To understand what’s going on, look no further than this week’s vote on welfare reform. It epitomised three of the most important trends in British politics: the addition of a harder edge to the Tory modernising agenda, the strategic confusion afflicting Labour, and the disconnect between the Lib Dem leaders and their party. Together, these trends help explain why the Tories are ahead even as the economy is contracting.

David Cameron is a sunny-side-up politician. At his first party conference as leader, he declared, ‘Let optimism beat pessimism. Let sunshine win the day.’ This attitude infused his approach to policy as well as politics. His economic doctrine was all about ‘sharing the proceeds of growth’. George Osborne, Cameron’s chief strategist, liked to stress that it was imperative that the Conservatives didn’t ‘sound like the old man on the park bench who says things were better in 1985, or 1955, or 1855. We have got to be the party that embraces the future.’ Then came the financial crisis. With banks collapsing, sunny rhetoric would have been horribly out of place. Cameron had to change both his course and his tone.

Not since 1745 has the union been in such danger. It now seems certain that there’ll either be a referendum on Scotland leaving the union in 2014 or that Westminster will have to resort to using the Supreme Court to stop Holyrood holding the vote, handing the Nationalists a huge propaganda victory. Support for independence in Scotland may stand at about a third, having not moved much over the years. But the campaign for it will be led by the most able politician in Scotland, the tactical equal of any politician in Britain, who runs the best campaign machine in the British Isles. No one should underestimate Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party. David Cameron decided to act, I understand, after learning that Salmond was on manoeuvres.

The year has begun with the British political class obsessing about the government’s new housing benefit cap. The cap is a sensible move to make sure that no one can claim more than £20,000 a year in housing benefit. It will save money. But, politically speaking, it is a ‘wedge issue’ of the sort usually deployed by American politicians. Its purpose is to force Labour to choose between an uncomfortable position and an unpopular one. Are you on the side of taxpayers, the Tories will ask, or of those being subsidised to live in places that most workers could not afford? Labour has, predictably, failed to avoid the trap.