David cameron

My word, the latest kerfuffle over gay marriage runs the gamut from dumb to dumber. Here, for instance, is Cristina Odone: He may get away with bullying a great many – perhaps the majority – into accepting his proposals. But in doing so Cameron will create a less liberal and tolerant society. Those who have held fast to their principles, will have to accept what the majority wants. But will the majority respect what the minority believes in? Not in Cameron's Britain, they won't. The moment the vicar or priest refuses to celebrate a gay marriage in their church, the aggrieved couple will see them in court — in Strasbourg.

It has been a rough few days for David Cameron. First he was drubbed at the polls in last week’s by-elections. Then little Alan Titchmarsh said that the Tory party had lost its roots in the countryside (and we know what happens to trees which lose their roots). And now I must be the bearer of even more bad news for young Dave, bad news from a once ardent Tory supporter: Jilly Cooper. As the cognac flowed at the 56th Hennessy Gold Cup on Saturday afternoon, Cooper told me that she is very disappointed with this government and declared that the Conservative Party is 'full of terrible people now.' The same event saw Elaine Page pass the classical singing torch on to rising star Natalie Coyle, who Page invited to join her as a special guest at a New York concert.

One of the foundations on which David Cameron based his decision to reject statutory underpinning of press regulation was that editors would set up a new system based on Lord Justice Leveson's recommendations which would prove far tougher than the Press Complaints Commission. The failure of the industry to reach consensus on a new body - and this is a real risk given the refusal of some publications to join the PCC - would pull the rug from under the Prime Minister's feet as he fights critics pushing for statute. Cameron is also facing claims that he is bowing to bullies in the press, and it is for these two reasons that the Prime Minister will be applying great pressure on editors as they meet Culture Secretary Maria Miller this week.

The first of many cross-party discussions on the response to the Leveson Inquiry lasted 30 minutes last night. The 'frank' meeting resulted in David Cameron agreeing to draft bill to see if the proposals in Lord Justice Leveson's report were workable. The idea is that the legislation will prove that the statutory underpinning of the new independent press regulator is unworkable, while Number 10 sources are briefing that the Prime Minister has 'not shifted one inch' on his position on the report. But agreeing to draft legislation, if only to prove those deep misgivings that Cameron retains, is a canny way of approaching the divide in Parliament over the response to the report.

For precisely 99 minutes yesterday, it looked like press freedom in Britain was doomed. At 1.30pm Lord Leveson announced his plans for statutory regulation of the press – with his bizarre instruction that we were not to call it statutory regulation. Worse, respectable commentators seemed to buy it. A very clever compromise, it was being argued. Self regulation really was being given another chance, albeit with a device which puts a legislative gun to the head of the press. If they obeyed his demands, he would not apply the force of the state. But at 3.09pm, the Prime Minister rejected all this outright. The existence of such a device, he said, would mean politicians setting the parameters under which the press operates which it hasn’t done since 1695.

While Leveson packs his sun-cream and flip-flops and prepares for a holiday in Australia, the nation holds its breath in anticipation of his report. One lucky citizen, the prime minister, is permitted a sneak glance at the findings of the great inquisitor into press malpractice. At 11.45 this morning, the monumental hardback landed with a thump on Number 10’s doormat. David Cameron barely had time to turn to the index and see how many name-checks he’d been given before he was whisked off to the Commons to answer questions from Ed Miliband. It was not a great occasion. The opposition leader challenged Cameron on the failure of the Work Programme, (b. June 2011), to terminate long-term unemployment. Reports yesterday revealed that just 3.

I'm informed by someone involved in the coalition negotiations on the issue that the reason the Liberal Democrats want to be able to make their own statement on the Leveson Report is that they intend to back the rapid creation of a statutory back-stop for newspaper regulation. By contrast, I hear that David Cameron doesn’t want to back any press law, at least for now. The key moment tomorrow will come with a meeting of the Cabinet’s coalition committee at noon. It is scheduled for an hour and is meant to thrash out whether a common position can be agreed. Michael Gove, the government’s most passionate opponent of statutory regulation, is a member of it as are all five Liberal Democrat Cabinet Ministers and David Laws.