More from The Week

A German economist visiting Britain was recently said to have declared himself baffled that a report about rising house prices was deemed to be good news. In Germany, he retorted, inflation in house prices, like inflation in food or energy prices, would be considered quite the opposite. By implication, there is an intellectually respectable case for interpreting favourably this week’s news that the Halifax house price index has plunged by 2.5 per cent, the biggest monthly fall since the depths of the last recession in 1992. House prices in Britain have been horribly overvalued for several years — by 30 per cent in the opinion of the IMF.

Is David Cameron feeling his way to a winning political narrative? In a number of recent speeches he has begun to spell out a new debate about the size of the state. It is definitively post-Thatcherite. The battle lines are not the traditional ones of cutting public provision and leaving the private sector to fill the gaps. Cameron is instead seeking ways of offering collective provision which is not run and dominated by a central state. The public appears cautiously interested. But, given the weakness of those bodies that once provided collective provision, say in welfare — poleaxed by good old Mr Attlee — provision of collective services by voluntary bodies sounds good, but is unlikely to provide any major innovations that voters would notice.

Now that Francis Maude is no longer lurking around Conservative headquarters dampening any high spirits he might encounter, bubbles of optimism are allowed to float with impunity around Team Cameron. For the last three weeks, the Tories have enjoyed double-digit opinion poll leads. The consensus in Westminster is that the Conservatives (or, more accurately, Boris Johnson) will capture London next month. Some bookmakers are now predicting an outright Conservative victory at the general election, whenever Gordon Brown deigns to hold it. The end of opposition appears, at last, to be in sight. In the absence of Mr Maude, the cure for Tory euphoria lies in the other dismal science: psephology.

The Spectator on the Government's handling of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill To date, the government’s hand-ling of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has resembled what might be called ‘Vicky Pollard politics’. Challenged to grant MPs a free vote on these far-reaching and ethically contentious proposals, the Prime Minister’s officials sent hugely confusing signals: ‘Yeah but no but yeah but no but yeah.’ Now the Prime Minister has finally conceded that Labour MPs will be able to vote with their consciences on three key issues: the striking of the phrase ‘need for a father’ from the rules governing IVF treatment; so-called ‘saviour siblings’; and the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos.

It is a story that could have been scripted to boost morale in Conservative headquarters. At five o’clock one morning, security guards at 10 Downing Street were called in to intercept an intruder only to find the Prime Minister trying to enter his own office. Apart from the delicious image this conjures of Gordon Brown in his pyjamas, cursing as he bashes in the security code, it caricatures him as the ideal political opponent. An inept, flailing control freak, whose own shortcomings will lose Labour the next election. Alas for the Tories, this story is several months out of date. It took place in the earliest days of the Brown premiership, when he had no home access to the Prime Minister’s computer, forcing him to sneak downstairs to the office.

The Spectator on why the Speaker is further besmirching the reputation of Parliament  The Speakership of the House of Commons has been aptly described as ‘the linchpin of the whole chariot’. This is why the lamentable conduct of Michael Martin, who has occupied the Speaker’s Chair since 2000, is more than just another parliamentary ‘sleaze’ story. By his sheer stubbornness, Mr Martin is behaving with epic selfishness and is besmirching the already sullied institution whose probity he, more than anyone else, is expected to protect. The wheels of the chariot are at risk of spinning off.

There are few feuds as destructive as the squabble over a legacy. In Bleak House, the case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce provides Charles Dickens with one of fiction’s most debilitating contests — a battle over an inheritance which blights all those involved. But Westminster is still, nevertheless, absorbed by the struggle to lay claim to a legacy. The inheritance which is the object of so much attention is the right to be recognised as the ‘heir to Blair’. When the former prime minister left office the general consensus among commentators was that he had overstayed his welcome. Those of us writing in 2003 that he was, at last, proving himself a proper reformer were a small band.

He is the longest serving of our major party leaders. He could be Prime Minister next year. He has had publicity that many a politician would kill for. Yet how many voters can answer a simple question — what does David Cameron really think? That is what I have been trying to do for a documentary on BBC Radio 4. My producer Martin Rosenbaum and I have spoken to those who know Cameron best — his friends, his colleagues and a few of those who he’s crossed over the years. Eighteen months ago we made a programme which asked the same question about the man who then looked set to be the next occupant of 10 Downing Street, Gordon Brown. Our aim then and now was to examine the values and the influences upon the man who would be Prime Minister rather than their policies.