David cameron

If you'd like a step-by-step preview of Labour's next election campaign, then do read Alastair Campbell's latest blog post.  All of Brown's attacks from PMQs are in there, and then some: "tax cuts for the rich"; a lack of "policy heavy lifting" on Cameron's part; the Tories "haven't really changed", etc. etc.  The spinmeister has been in closer contact with Downing Street recently, and it shows.  It's all gone a bit bar-brawling. The Tories now face a choice between, broadly speaking, three different responses: i) Ignore Campbell.

The Tories are in mild shock following PMQs, they never expected Cameron to get clunked like that. Brown is clearly going to try and use Tory inheritance tax policy to ram home the message that a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. But the Tories are taking comfort from their belief that Brown’s ugly class war politics won’t work, pointing to how they failed in Crewe and Nantwich. But the attacks on Edward Timpson backfired, at least in part, because Timpson was a bad target. It is hard to portray someone as an out of touch, uncaring toff when their family have fostered 80 odd children and have a long history of local philanthropy.

The opinion polls are continuing to feed the story that the Tories are in trouble. Tonight’s Politics Home data which shows Cameron’s personal ratings dropping 15 points in the last 10 weeks follows a string of polls where the Tories have failed to break through the forty percent mark. Tory morale has been a bit shaken by these polls; Cameron could do with a decisive win at PMQs tomorrow to gee up the Parliamentary party. But turning these numbers around is, I suspect, going to require some policies that show us what David Cameron’s irreducible core is. Oddly enough, I don’t think these policies have to be particularly popular but they have to show the electorate that Cameron stands for something, that he isn’t just another say anything to win politician.

Ok, so the Age of Austerity means that promises made in sunnier times will need to be forestalled - or even cancelled altogether.  But it's still revealing that Labour are thinking about reversing their plan to raise the threshold at which inheritance tax is levied. After all, this is what Brown regards as The Great Dividing Line: the Tories implementing a tax cut for their "rich friends," on the one side, and Labour implementing policies "for the many," on the other.  Darling's decision to raise the IHT threshold to £350,000 for single people and £700,000 for married couples undermined that crude message.  Reversing the policy may, in Labour strategists' eyes, strengthen the dividing line.

In the politics column this week, I write about how the Tories plan to hand over many of the traditional policy making powers of the Cabinet to a seven man policy board. The Cameroons are going to do this partly because it is a model that has worked well for them in oppoistion and that they are comfortable with but also because the Cabinet is just too large for effective, detailed discussions about policy. The shadow Cabinet currently has 34 members in it. In government, this number will have to drop by at least ten. But still, a 24 person group is, probably, too large to foster constructive and detailed debate. However, if the Cabinet was smaller, then it would be easier to restore it to its traditional role without sacrificing effectiveness.

Another good quote for the Brown 'n' Blair scrapbook, courtesy of Ben Brogan's column in the Telegraph: "Only once in the 20th century has a government that won the games survived to deliver them. A change of administration in the run-up to the Olympics might be expected to herald political trouble. Thankfully, David Cameron does not share Gordon Brown's loathing of what he refers to as 'Tony's f------ Olympics'. He is committed to ensuring stability by protecting London 2012's status as the Switzerland of politics, immune from partisan attacks." Brogan's wider argument is worth noting: that the Cameroons think 2012 could be the tonic the country – and their potential mid-term government – needs.  Myself, I still think there's a strong case for an Austerity Olympics.

Fascinating details dominated PMQs today. Instead of the usual custard pie-fight this was a game of chess. Things began with talk of downpours and sandbags. Both leaders were concerned that the sodden folk of Cumbria are receiving enough hot soup and blankets. The PM reminded us that he’d recently popped up there to squelch around in his wellies shaking people’s hands and nodding sympathetically. Then Cameron pulled out a firecracker. He accused Brown of shambolic incompetence in allowing public money to flow into the hands of a front organization for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist group whose constitution denounces non-Moslems in virulent terms. ‘They are combatants in the battlefield. Their blood is lawful, as is their property.’ One thing’s for sure.

The Observer’s Ipsos-Mori poll has dominated political discussion since its publication on Sunday. But two things that I have heard tonight have increased my scepticism that it marks a dramatic shift in public opinion. First, I hear that another of the big pollsters had a survey in the field at the same time and it showed a fourteen point Tory lead. Second, a new poll for Political Betting has Labour down on 22, only a point ahead of the Lib Dems. With polls it is the ones that are surprising that make waves; I’m sure we’ll all run down a few more rabbit holes before election day. The odd surprsingly tight poll is not all bad for the Tories. It helps, as one candidate in a marginal seat said to me yesterday, get the activists out and deals with any sense of complacency.

If you want a measure of how disastrous yesterday's Queen's Speech was for Gordon Brown, you need only pay heed to two things.  First, today's news coverage, which is almost universally negative for the PM.  Even the FT, which is usually quite forgiving of Brown, launches an acerbic attack on the "shameless politicking" in the speech.  And that's before we get onto numerous stories about discontent on the left, as well as unflattering write-ups by political columnists across the political spectrum. The second is David Cameron's interview on the Today programme this morning.

Even before the Queen had trundled back to Buckingham Palace, Mandy had let the cat out of the bag. Speaking on BBC News he said of the Gracious Speech, ‘All these laws are relevant … and achievable. It will be for the public to decide whether they want them or not.’  There you have it. The greatest power in the land admits the Queen’s Speech is Labour’s manifesto. The response to the Gracious Speech is an enjoyably ragged parliamentary occasion, full of ancient traditions and even more ancient jokes. Frank Dobson proposed the Humble Address and spoke with pride about his Holborn constituency where the anti-Apartheid movement had been born.