David cameron

The Observer has a cracking scoop: a brief document detailing a new Labour plan to attack Cameron. The memo has been written by Shaun Woodward, the former Tory MP and Labour cabinet minister who now heads Labour’s anti-Tory unit. He will report to the shadow cabinet in the next few weeks. He says: ‘At the last election we faced a Conservative party (and a Conservative leader in David Cameron) whose strategic goal was to decontaminate their brand, intending to present themselves as reformed, modern, centrist and pragmatic. Cameron was effective in promoting a perception [that] his party had changed.

Nick Clegg laughed-off the dousing of blue paint he received in Glasgow yesterday, like one of Noel Edmonds’ unwitting victims. Today, Clegg has turned into the grinning douser: drenching his coalition partners in yellow paint by saying that the European Convention on Human Rights will not be watered down. Writing in the Guardian, Clegg says that the Conservatives are right to seek operational reform of the European Court of Human Rights, but the common ground ends there. He says that “the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights have been instrumental” in preventing injustices from council snooping to the misuse of DNA records and that the incorporation of human rights into domestic law was a “hugely positive step”.

Poor David Cameron. He pledged to reduce annual net migration from the current 240,000 to the "tens of thousands" and what happens? Net migration in 2010 was up by 21 per cent from 2009. In a way, he deserves the flak he'll get because this was a daft target that could only have been set by someone poorly-advised about the nature of immigration. And the target allows success to be presented as failure. The inflow to Britain has stayed steady (see graph below), but the number emigrating from Britain has fallen. This is a compliment to Cameron: the most sincere vote people can make is with their feet. And in our globalised world, countries have to compete for people. Britain is as attractive as ever it was to immigrants, and more natives are staying put.

"They'll like us when we win," the West Wing's Toby Ziegler said of the Arab world. David Cameron might have said the same when public opinion was turning against the intervention in Libya. And, judging by today's YouGov poll, he'd have been right. Public support for military intervention has mirrored the public’s view of how well the action is going. In the first two weeks, when optimism prevailed, the public were largely in favour. However, as that optimism wore off and people increasingly doubted that the rebels could succeed, more and more began to oppose our involvement. Before the weekend, just 26 per cent thought the intervention was going well, and only 31 per cent were in favour of it.

David Cameron’s statement on Libya just now was cautious in tone and content. The Prime Minister stressed that "no transition is ever smooth or easy." Cameron said that he wanted to see Libya become a "free, democratic and inclusive" country. He emphasised that the NATO mission there would continue for as long as necessary. In an attempt to reassure the country that the liberation of Tripoli will not be followed by the chaos that followed the fall of Baghdad, Cameron repeatedly mentioned the post-conflict reconstruction planning that has been going on. He also said that he had stressed to the National Transitional Council that there must be no reprisals. Noticeably, Cameron decided to reiterate his "necessary, legal and right" formulation in this statement.

If David Cameron breaks his holidays yet again, you'll know it's because he expects Gaddafi to be a goner pretty soon. It's been a busy old night in Tripoli, with Twitter reports suggesting that Gaddafi is already dead. Mind you, William Hague et al have learned to treat Twitter reports with a mountain of salt. Let there be no doubt: Cameron pushed for the Libyan intervention, averting what looked certain to be a massacre in Benghazi. The Prime Minister took a principled stand. In so doing, he reminded the world that the West can still intervene when it so chooses and will not stand by to watch slaughter. This was a decisive moment. Averting a Benghazi massacre was in itself a victory.

Anyone looking for a good blast of common sense on a Saturday morning should read Eric Pickles’ interview in the Telegraph. In it, he responds to much of the kite-flying by the Liberal Democrat left in recent weeks. In an exchange that will have many of his Cabinet colleagues nodding along in agreement, Pickles criticises judicial activism and the chilling effect it is having on ministers: “You are constantly looking over your shoulder for judicial review … the electorate is being frustrated,” he says. “I could kind of expect to be reviewed on procedural matters, but to be reviewed on policy?” But, should judges not have some oversight of policy? “No,” he replies. “I’m a bit old-fashioned really.

The row over sentencing rioters has morphed into a row about prison numbers and safety. Cathy Newman has been issuing a steady stream of tweets all afternoon, revealing that the Ministry of Justice is concerned about overcrowding and safety in prisons and young offenders’ institutions: an internal memo discloses that 2 convicted rioters have been assaulted and hospitalised. This is not altogether surprising: prisons are not exactly renowned for offering new inmates a genteel welcome. Still, it provides ammunition for those who oppose the courts’ stern response to the riots. There is now a record 86,654 incarcerated people in Britain; compared to 85,253 people the week before.

I have interviewed Iain Duncan Smith for tomorrow’s Spectator. In print, space is always tight and we kept it to 1,500 words. One of the beauties of online is that you can go into detail in political debate that you never could with print: facts, graphs (my guilty pleasure) and quotes. Here is a 2,300-word version of the IDS interview, with subheadings so CoffeeHousers can skip the parts that don’t interest them. I’ve known him for years, and remember how hard it was to get out of his room four years ago when he started on the subject of gang culture and the merits early intervention. Now, he’s in the DWP, able to enact all he spoke about. He believes the riots will transform Cameron’s premiership in the same way that 9-11 did Blair’s.