David cameron

In tomorrow’s Spectator we have an interview with Graham Brady, tipped to be chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs – which David Cameron has just proposed to abolish in his 4.30pm meeting with MPs today. Technically, he is proposing to dilute its membership by including the payroll vote, thereby making it synonymous with the parliamentary party. So the backbenchers would not have a voice of their own. And Mr Brady’s position would be much less important. Here is an extract from tomorrow’s interview: In the era of Blair-style landslides, the likes and loves of backbench MPs mattered little: the government’s majority was big enough to force through most votes. But the loyalty of Tory MPs to a coalition government is untested.

One of the things that critics of the LibCon coalition keep coming back to is the question of what will happen in European, local and other elections. Will the two governing parties stand against each other? And how can they differentiate themselves when they support the same policies? To many, it seems like David Cameron and Nick Clegg are suggesting that we all walk backwards – odd, uncomfortable and unlikely to ensure progress. But why is this so odd? This kind of electioneering happens in many other countries. Take Denmark. There, a Liberal-Conservative government has been in power for almost a decade and across several elections, yet the two governing parties have gone to elections as separate parties, each with their own platform.

There is a massive difference between rebellious talk and actual rebellion. But some of the language surrounding the 55 percent rule has been striking. When I told one senior MP that David Cameron had said on Sunday that he would whip this vote, the MP shot back defiantly, ‘you whip if you want to.’ David Davis’s intervention on the issue on the World at One was particularly significant. Having called the 55 percent rule ‘just a terrible formula for government’ it is hard to see how he can support the measure. It is also hard to imagine that a man who picks his fights so carefully would have marched so far up the hill if he was not confident that he had a critical number of foot soldiers behind him.

David Cameron’s first broadcast interview from Downing Street contained two significant pieces of news. First, George Osborne will commission an independent audit of the public finances and state spending on Monday. I suspect that this audit will reveal that things are even worse than the official figures suggest. The political purpose of this audit will be to provide cover for the necessary cuts, to show that they are necessary because of Labour’s economic mismanagement. I also expect that the new Office of Budgetary Responsibility will provide a new, more cautious set of economic forecasts. The other piece of news was Cameron confirming that the vote on the 55 percent clause will be whipped.

Spare a thought for poor Theresa May. Judging by the reaction so far, she now faces the unenviable task of shouldering almost everyone’s preconceptions about Tory women in government – with Caroline Spelman, Baroness Warsi and the lower-profile Cheryl Gillan for back-up. She will no doubt continue to disappoint feminists and irritate reactionaries, and she will do so while responsible for the notoriously unwieldy Home Office, which has rapidly taken over from the Department of Health as the ministry where political careers go to die. Representation in politics does matter. It is not unreasonable to claim, as Katharine Viner did in Thursday’s Guardian, that “democracies simply don't work unless they represent those they govern”.

Plenty of eyes on the Tory grandees at the moment.  I mean, the right of the party isn't exactly delighted with the LibCon coalition - so the search is on for figureheads to lead the resistance.  Which is why Andrew Neil's interview with Douglas Hurd on Staight Talk this weekend is worth paying attention to. As it happens, Lord Hurd is quite complementary towards David Cameron and his role in organising the coalition.  Here's the actual quote: "I think it was a brave thing to do.  It might have gone terribly wrong, but he went straight for it and he was completely straightforward in saying this is what this is, and eventually he won what he wanted.  I think it was an act of courage and of skill, those two things which create a good politician...

Today's civil partnership between two men who look uncannily like each other will, I suspect, be remembered as a festival of misplaced optimism. Cameron overdid it a little, making out that this was his ideal outcome. It seems rude to point it out, but there were two podiums in that rose garden because he flunked the election (see Tim Montgomerie's superlative report for details). The cost of his failure to win is having to do a deal with Nick Clegg. The country didn't vote for a new politics: the Lib Dems did worse than last time, so polls show most voters would have preferred Cameron to have formed a minority government. This is an alliance designed to stop Cameron fighting an election again soon, and repeating last week's jarring experience.