David cameron

Here, CoffeeHousers, is my take on this morning's Cameron interview: 1. General demeanor: excellent, articulate, confident. The complete opposite from Brown. It does make you think that he should wipe the floor with Brown in the TV debates. 2. “Last week we saw William Hague and George Osborne going to Afghanistan together. First shadow Chancellor, the man who is going to be in charge of the money, on the frontline seeing what is going on in Afghanistan”. Indeed, but the NHS pledge and deficit cut pledge imply deep cuts to the military. To govern is to choose, and Cameron has made his choice: NHS spending before the military.

After the hubbub about Hewitt ‘n’ Hoon’s plot to unseat Gordon Brown, PMQs is perhaps a distant memory. It’s certainly made my review a little later than usual. But better late than never, as today’s clash was a bloody and intriguing contest with both party leaders on combative form. Cameron seemed unusually relaxed, glib and self-confident. Perhaps he’d been tipped off about the plot. Or perhaps he’d been thrilled by the sight of his beautifully groomed coiffure in the bathroom mirror this morning. If he spent as much time on his manifesto as he did on his hair there’d be no talk of a hung parliament. But this didn’t seem to bother him today and he laid happily into the Prime Minister over the budget deficit.

East Surrey will be the first seat where Tory central office gets to impose a shortlist of three candidates on a local association. Peter Ainsworth, its MP, has today announced that he is stepping down and because he has waited until the New Year to make this announcement CCHQ’s emergency candidate selection rules now apply. The first thing to watch for is whether the Tories go for an all women shortlist. When Cameron said in October that the party would have some “all-women shortlists to help us boost the number of Conservative women MPs” there was a furious reaction from some sections of the grassroots. There was even talk of setting up a legal fighting fund to challenge the decision.

During an election campaign, the press like to obsess about who won the day. Up until 3pm, the consensus was that the Tories had. The media was pointing out just how absurd it was for Labour to criticise another party for having black holes in its fiscal plans. But then came David Cameron’s marriage gaffe which has evened up the coverage on the evening news broadcasts with the Six o’clock news going particularly hard on the issue. Cameron’s credibility is central to the Tory campaign so anything that depletes that is bad news for them. But in the long term, I think the most significant development today is one that is not getting much coverage on the TV news: Darling’s refusal to commit to not raising VAT.

After the platitudes in David Cameron's speech yesterday, comes the bluntness of Ken Clarke in today's Sunday Telegraph.  Interviewed by the paper, the shadow business secretary says that it would be a "folly" to rule out tax rises: "It is something that every Conservative tries to avoid but I didn't avoid it when I was getting us out of recession before. Coming out of a recession when you have such a severe deficit you can't rule out putting up taxes." He's right, of course.  The mammoth size of the deficit, and the lag before many spending reductions take effect, will mean that the Tories shouldn't rule out tax rises.  More than that, in fact: they'll certainly have to introduce them.  As we already know, plans are afoot to increase VAT to at least 20 percent.

There is a fascinating glimpse at the tensions inside the top echelons of the Conservative party in The Times today. Francis Elliott reports that Steve Hilton is trying to veto the appointment of James O’Shaugnessy, head of policy for the party, as head of the Downing Street policy unit should the Tories win the election. Francis writes that tensions between Hilton and O’Shaugnessy have been exacerbated by disputes about what should go in the initial slice of the Tory manifesto which will be published on Monday. O’Shaugnessy is one of politics' nice guys. But he has been the focus of negative briefing in recent months. Back in early September, I was told that Hilton was casting around for other candidates for the job in government.

The latest Comres poll for the Independent indicates, as if we needed telling, that the Tories are yet to seal the deal. It’s far from panic stations – the lead remains at 9 points – but there are two figures that prove where the Tories are going wrong. The majority of respondents feel that a Conservative government would exclusively represent the interests of the rich, and the contention that the Tories represent an appealing alternative to Labour was rejected. If Cameron is merely a PR man I hope he’s cheap. Aside from Alex Salmond I can’t envisage anything worse than five more years of Gordon, and this suggests to me that Cameron is struggling to communicate with voters. Nowhere is this more palpable than the preposterous class war.