David cameron

Was there ever a more unilluminating political idea — for voters rather than practitioners — than triangulation? For those readers so pure and high-minded that they have not followed politics for 20 years, I should explain that triangulation came from Bill Clinton, was imported by Tony Blair, and is now practised by David Cameron. Clinton’s adviser, Dick Morris, put it thus: ‘The President needed to take a position that not only blended the best of each party’s views but also transcended them to constitute a third force in the debate.’ The Tories’ adoption of the Living Wage is the latest example.

One of the notable things about David Cameron in the months after winning the election has been quite how impatient and keen he is to get on with important reforms. As I wrote last week, the Prime Minister seems to have been invigorated by his victory, rather than lapsing into complacency - and that is largely a very good thing. But on one issue, he hasn’t stayed quite up to speed. Perhaps it’s because it’s not a domestic reform issue, or perhaps it’s because it relates to a question that politicians seem increasingly reluctant to address, which is Britain’s role in the world, but whatever it is, the government has ended up appearing rather behind on the refugee crisis.

Was there ever a more unilluminating political idea — for voters rather than practitioners — than triangulation? For those readers so pure and high-minded that they have not followed politics for 20 years, I should explain that triangulation came from Bill Clinton, was imported by Tony Blair, and is now practised by David Cameron. Clinton’s adviser, Dick Morris, put it thus: ‘The President needed to take a position that not only blended the best of each party’s views but also transcended them to constitute a third force in the debate.’ The Tories’ adoption of the Living Wage is the latest example.

It comes to something when the rather bizarre Labour leadership contest forces David Cameron to defend his government’s approach to the refugee crisis. Yesterday Yvette Cooper described ministers’ refusal to take more refugees as ‘cowardly’ and ‘immoral’, and today the Prime Minister insisted that ‘I don’t think there is an answer that can be achieved simply by taking more and more refugees’. He said: ‘We have taken a number of genuine asylum seekers from Syrian refugee camps, we keep that under review, but we think the most important thing is to try to bring peace and stability to that part of the world.’ Incidentally, the Prime Minister’s favourite economist Paul Collier offers his solution to the crisis here.

The Great British Bake Off has been praised for getting the nation cooking. Now, it seems the fever has become political, as anti-austerity campaigners get baking ahead of this year's party conference in Manchester. Activists have been tasked with baking their best anti-Tory cakes for a picnic due to be held as part of the action against the Tory conference. But rather than a poisoned creation for a Conservative politician of choice, the winning entry will be fed to the homeless. The lucky winner will be given a ticket to 'Laugh Them Out Of Town', a comedy event taking place during conference featuring Frankie Boyle and the Thick of It's Sara Pascoe, which hopes to use jokes to drive the Tories out of town.

Just a few months ago, almost everyone thought that David Cameron was a goner. That he was about to go down in history as a one-term Prime Minister who failed to win against a bad Labour leader in 2010 then lost to a worse one in 2015. During this period, Anthony Seldon spoke to a long line of well-placed people for his biography of David Cameron; people who would have imagined they could talk freely because his book would be an autopsy. As a result, the former Master of Wellington College seems to have drawn plenty information from people who perhaps regret their candour now. David Richards, the former head of the military, is candid about how he believed that the Libyan project was a disaster – embarked upon primarily to assuage the Prime Minister’s friends in Notting Hill.

Oh dear. Although Lord Ashcroft said he would be pleasantly surprised if Anthony Seldon's biography of David Cameron offered anything more than 'a sanitised account' of his time in Number 10, an excerpt in today's Mail on Sunday should make interesting reading for Boris Johnson.

Here is a preview of Martin Vander's Any Other Business Column in this week's Spectator, out tomorrow... Asked to name Britain’s greatest living industrial designer, most people might cite Sir Jony Ive of Apple or Sir James Dyson of the bagless vacuum cleaner. I’d certainly shortlist Ive, but I traded in my unreliable Dyson for a brutally efficient German machine called a Sebo and I’ve always thought Sir James was overhyped. I might also mention Dumfries-born Ian Callum, the director of design for Jaguar cars responsible for the sleek F-Type.

What will David Cameron do with his final few years in power? On election night, he said he wanted his party 'to reclaim a mantle that we should never have lost: the mantle of one nation'. This raised the prospect of Cameron trying to succeed where so many of his predecessors failed: in making it clear that conservatism actually delivers the fairness, the poverty reduction and the social cohesion that Labour can only talk about. Cameron has spoken about this agenda over the years, but there’s seldom much of a follow-up – raising questions about how serious he actually is. But today, we seen a signal of harder intent: he has hired Christian Guy, the director of the Centre for Social Justice, as an adviser.

Will David Cameron really consider staying on as Prime Minister for the 2020 election as well? Ever since the Sun on Sunday reported that some of the Tory leader’s colleagues were agitating for him to continue, there has been feverish speculation about whether he will. Those MPs in favour of a longer reign from Cameron claim that he made his commitment to go before the next election while chopping vegetables in his kitchen and that he wasn’t really thinking. But he has reiterated that commitment since the election, and so clearly doesn’t think it was a mistake worth correcting. But the chatter about the PM going ‘on and on’, as he puts it, does raise a question that Cameron will have to answer at some point, which is his departure date.

Kids Company staff and service users have been protesting outside Downing Street today after the charity announced it was closing its doors. But the Prime Minister isn’t there: he’s on holiday. He did, however, give this clip to broadcasters in which he defended his ministers’ decision to overrule officials’ concerns and give the struggling charity a further £3 million: ‘Well, the government thought it was the right thing to do, to give this charity one last chance of restructuring to try to make sure it could continue its excellent work.

Tories tend to think that Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader will be fabulously useful for their party, returning them an even bigger majority in 2020 and pitching his own party into such turmoil that it struggles to work as an effective Opposition. But one benefit of his leadership to the existing Tory majority has been overlooked, which is the effect it would have on the Democratic Unionist Party. Sources in the DUP point out to me that given Corbyn's friendship with Sinn Fein, they would be unable to work with Labour to exert pressure on the Conservatives in key votes. This may mean that the eight DUP MPs are more likely to vote with the Conservatives, thus boosting their tiny majority of 12.