David cameron

An opportunity to compare-and-contrast David Cameron and Ed Miliband outside the sweaty heat of PMQs, with both party leaders delivering speeches to the CBI this morning. Given the audience, both majored on business, enterprise, and all that – and it meant there was plenty of overlap on areas such as green technology and broadband. There were some differences, though, that are worth noting down. Cameron was first up, setting out a three-step plan for boosting British business. Broadly speaking, it revolved around what the government is trying to achieve in the Spending Review – and so the PM boasted that, "last week, we took Britain out of the danger zone.

May 2015 is an age away in political terms. But the question of what happens to the coalition after the next election is too politically interesting to be able to resist speculating on; even if this speculation is almost certainly going to be overtaken by events. Over at ConservativeHome, Paul Goodman asks if Cameron and Osborne share Francis Maude’s view that the coalition should continue after the next election even if the Tories win an outright majority. My impression is that they do. If the Tories won a majority of between 10 and 30, I’d be surprised if Cameron didn’t try and keep the coalition going. There are four main reasons why I think the Tory leadership would want to keep the Liberal Democrats in the government in these circumstances.

By his own admission, to today’s Mail, David Cameron is not afraid of unpopularity. On hearing this, a few quizzical grins may break across his critics’ faces, but, undeniably, the government’s fate was cast this week: either its fiscal plan will work or it won’t. Cameron is unperturbed because he is sure that he is right - not only in his political and economic judgement, but also in terms of morality.

There are several interesting columns on George Osborne in the papers today. In The Times, Tony Blair’s former speechwriter Phil Collins warns Labour to stop underestimating the Chancellor, who is defining the political battle on his terms at the moment. Peter Oborne, by contrast, is highly critical of Osborne in his Telegraph column, warning that Osborne’s partisan presentation of the cuts risks undermining support for the whole project. For once, I find myself disagreeing with Peter. I think Osborne is doing some of the political heavy-lifting that Cameron could not do without undermining his standing as a national leader; Osborne’s praise for the 2004 Republican campaign is instructive in trying to understand what is going on here.

Cameron was a mere warm-up man at PMQs today. With Osborne’s statement due at 12.30 the session felt like a friendly knock-up rather than the main fixture. Ed Miliband rose to thunderous cheers from his backbenches and he tried to capitalise on their support by opening up an ancient Tory wound – heartless attitudes to unemployment. Spotting Cameron chinwagging with Osborne instead of listening, Miliband chided the PM for not paying attention. ‘Well, it’s a novel concept,’ said Dave smoothly ‘but in this government the prime minister and the chancellor speak to each other.’   Ed’s problem was that the OBR has predicted rising employment for the next three years. Bad news for the opposition leader.

In opposition, nearly every politician talks about the dangers of an over-mighty executive. But office has a habit of changing peoples’ views on this subject. Charles Walker’s amendment (which he discusses over at ConservativeHome, here) to match any reduction in the number of MPs with an equivalent reduction in the number of ministers, so that the proportional size of the payroll vote remains the same, is an early test of whether office has begun to erode Cameron’s commitment to a proper balance between the executive and the legislature.   If a reduction in the number of MPs is not matched by a reduction in the number of ministers, then the executive will become more powerful and the House more of a creature of it.

The Ministry of Defence’s -7.5 percent budget settlement is a better deal than it appeared the MoD would get back in the summer. Tim Montgomerie hails it as a triumph for Fox and his full-on campaign against the deeper cuts that the Treasury wanted. But No 10 is keen for it not to been seen like this. They don’t want ministers to think next time round that the way to get a good deal is to kick up a fuss and enlist the papers on your behalf. There is so much anger with Fox in Downing Street, even those who are usually sympatheticto him are exasperated with him at the moment, that he’ll have a difficult next few months.

You could write a book about that. The first ever Dave vs Ed Miliband fixture at PMQs was a fascinating joust between two smart, skilful and ruthlessly ambitious public men who have been groomed for power, in their different ways, from the cradle. Four decades of arduous preparation led to this tumultuous match. Ed Miliband opened in funereal tones and offered ritual homages to the dead of Afghanistan. Then in his modest bank-manager’s manner he pledged to support government reform to sickness benefits. But not, he added ominously, to child benefit cuts. How many families with one stay-home parent would suffer from the forthcoming cuts, he asked. Cameron couldn’t answer with an integer. He gave a percentage. Those who pay the higher tax-rate would be affected.