David cameron

David Cameron’s Commons statement today contained two blunt warnings. In a significant escalation of the argument over communications data, he warned that ‘we will suffer’ if we don’t make progress on the matter. He also declared that not intervening in Syria could boost extremism and mean that the situation there becomes a ‘tragedy for us too’. On communications data, I suspect that there’s a limit to how much progress he can make with his coalition partners. The vibe from the Clegg camp is that they have no desire to back down on this issue and feel that many of their critics are being opportunistic post Woolwich. However, it was Cameron’s warning on Syria—which I suspect will receive less coverage—that struck me more.

Jo Johnson is now in situ, Christopher Lockwood has started his two-year sabbatical from the Economist and David Cameron’s new policy unit is in in place and ready to go producing ideas of how to win the 2015 election. But word is that they’re not entirely overflowing with ideas, and believe it will be tough to improve on the inherited agenda. This is true to an extent, as the Coalition Agreement was pretty radical. Then, ministers wanted to achieve a Moore’s Law-style expansion of Free Schools, elimination of the deficit and reconstruction of a dysfunctional welfare state. Any one of those three would have been more than Labour achieved in 13 years . I always thought that, instead of the Queen’s Speech, they should give a progress report on that original agenda.

I suspect that there’ll be a few MPs and peers nervously waiting for 9pm on Thursday night. For this is when the Panorama special on parliament and lobbying, which has already caused Patrick Mercer to resign the Tory whip, will be broadcast. Today’s Telegraph contains details of the accusations surrounding Mercer. The paper alleges that the MP has been paid £4,000 by a fake lobbying company set up by the Telegraph and the production company making Panorama. Mercer appears not to have declared this money. But he has asked a string of questions on Fiji; the paper claims that the company had told him that ending Fiji’s suspension from the Commonwealth was a priority for its clients. The paper says that Mercer declined to answer a series of questions on the matter.

Does marriage matter anymore? Not so long ago, David Cameron was foremost amongst those giving an unfashionable ‘yes’ to this question. It became his signature theme, the closest he had to a Blair-style ‘irreducible core’. It seemed, at the time, as if a 1979-style realignment was underway. The Labour Party was being sucked into the vortex of its own economic failure. Its social failure was just as profound: it had tested to destruction the idea that more welfare makes countries stronger or fairer. And study after study showed that the institution of marriage was easily the most powerful weapon every developed to promote health, wealth and education. In Cameron, we seemed to have leader willing to say so. In my Telegraph column today, I look at what happened.

Hardly a day goes by these days without a story about Boris Johnson and the Tory leadership. Yesterday, it was Andy Coulson’s revelation that David Cameron believed Boris Johnson would be after his job once he’d been London Mayor. Today, it is The Economist talking about ‘Generation Boris’, the more libertarian inclined voters who the magazine suggests will sweep him to Downing Street in 2020. Now, for Cameron having as his main leadership rival someone who isn’t an MP is not actually that bad, however infuriating some in his circle might find the press and the party’s love affair with the London Mayor.

Boris Johnson is 'absolutely increasingly confident' that David Cameron will win in 2015. This was the Mayor's attempt at responding to Andy Coulson's suggestion that he's desperate for the PM to fail so he can cycle in and save the party, a blond messiah. Attempt is perhaps the wrong word, as it suggests Boris made those remarks off the cuff when the Mayor gives every impression that he scripts each remark with as much care as he puts into his newspaper columns. He told 5 News' Andy Bell: 'I'm always grateful to Andy Coulson for his career advice but I'm backing David Cameron who I am absolutely increasingly confident is going to win.' This is damning praise.

From his base in New York, Rupert Murdoch knows where to get the best analysis of British politics: The Spectator. He has just Tweeted that David Cameron is in trouble, after reading James Forsyth’s brilliant political column. It’s easy to see why he was so struck. As so often, James’ tells you more about what’s really going on in SW1 than most newspapers put together. As you’d expect from the single best-informed journalist in Westminster. And he's right, even by James' standards, this week's column is outstanding. Read the full thing here. Of course, Rupe is not the only New York-based journalist who has worked out how to get the best dope about what’s happening in Britain.

The political response to the Woolwich murder is following two broad patterns. On the one hand, the party leaders make dignified, calm statements, tending almost to the banal. There was, for example, very little difference between the comments of Ed Miliband and those of Nigel Farage. Both condemned the murder, offered support to Drummer Rigby’s family and urged calm from all. Unity is not surprising: there is not much one can reasonably say about such events without jerking a knee and making oneself hostage to fortune. The beheading of an off-duty soldier is no more representative of Islam than the reaction of the English Defence League is representative of patriotism.

It's fashionable to say Downing Street isn't very good at strategy. So fashionable, in fact, that sometimes journalists worry they're being unfair to the Tory leadership. But today we saw yet another example of the Prime Minister leaving an open goal for not just the opposition party but also his own Coalition partners to score. On Monday, Google's Eric Schmidt visited Downing Street for the regular Business Advisory Group meeting. He was allowed to leave by the back door, and the Prime Minister's aides were adamant that David Cameron wouldn't 'confront' the Google boss on his company's tax arrangements. All he planned to do was to take the group through his agenda for the G8, they said. So today, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband jumped into the void left by Cameron's reluctance.

After all the parliamentary back and forth yesterday, gay marriage passed third reading by the comfortable margin of 366 to 161. Tory sources are briefing that fewer of their MPs voted against at third reading than second reading, though we’ll have to wait for the division lists to confirm that. We probably now have only a couple more Commons votes left on this; there’ll be on any amendments made to the bill by the House of Lords. The atmosphere in the House as the result was read out did not seem particularly historic. There was some clapping from the Labour front bench, but the Treasury bench didn’t join in and it rather petered out. But, I suspect, that in years to come this will be remembered as one of the more significant things that David Cameron did in office.