David cameron

It’s not clear who David Cameron is trying to annoy more: his party or the press pack following him at the G7 summit in Bavaria. But what is clear, at least in the Prime Minister’s mind, is that he has been misinterpreted on the issue of a free vote in the EU referendum. Not over-interpreted, as Number 10 said this morning. ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted,’ he said, explaining that he was referring to the renegotiation: ‘I was clearly referring to the process of renegotiation. But the point is this. I have always said what I want is an outcome for Britain that keeps us in a reformed EU. But I have also said we don’t know the outcome of these negotiations, which is why I have always said I rule nothing out.

After the general election, Edward Llewellyn, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, was made a Privy Councillor. Any member of the Privy Council is addressed as ‘Right Honourable’ and these words well describe Llewellyn’s character, so there is no problem there. But why should an adviser be given this role? If you study the list (which, be warned, takes a long time), you will see that Privy Councillors are almost all MPs (or ex-MPs), peers or judges. This is because they are supposed to be, in some small way, powers in the land, people in their own right, rather than servants of the powerful.

Renegotiating substantial change in Britain’s EU relationship is a problem for David Cameron. On the one hand, the Eurozone is facing an unknown challenge with a Grexit on the horizon. But many in the Tory party believe the Prime Minister’s efforts are smoke and mirrors, and he won’t achieve the change they crave. Michael Gove is one, and Nigel Lawson is another. The Tory grandee spoke to Newsnight about what he expects from the renegotiations. Not much, it seems: ‘I think that the odds are we will see a repetition of what happened in 1975. I think it's likely that the changes that David Cameron will secure will be inconsequential, of no significance at all.

The first PMQs after an election victory is a moment to savour for a Prime Minister. He knows that the result gives him a trump card he can play again and again. So, it was unsurprising that Harriet Harman made little progress against Cameron. He treated it as a gentle net session, meeting each question with a slightly more aggressive and expansive answer. He did, though, seem slightly discombobulated by Ed Balls’ absence. Early on he made a joke about Balls’ defeat and then looked over to where Balls used to sit to drive the point home, but Balls – of course — wasn’t there.

One of the important but unglamorous adjustments that the Conservatives have had to make in majority government is the structure of government itself. It’s the sort of thing that was particularly important under the Coalition, as Nick Clegg had managed, rather cannily, to gather a great deal of power for himself on powerful but unheard of Cabinet committees. Now there is no Nick Clegg, and Oliver Letwin has taken the former Deputy Prime Minister’s place on the Cabinet Committees where he wielded unseen power by blocking Tory policies.

The last time former French Justice Minister and MEP Rachida Dati had the attention of the British press she was embroiled in a combination of sex, politics and intrigue as only the French establishment could concoct. Now she’s back as an unlikely, but potentially vital, centrepiece to the Conservative leadership’s plan to keep Britain in Europe. 'David Cameron has been brave in basically saying: we want the British people to feel comfortable in the EU, but we want them to have a "better deal"' Dati opines. We’re sat in the grandly gothic surroundings of London’s St Pancras station, and the last staging post en-route back to Brussels feels a suitable place to discuss Britain’s place in Europe.

David Cameron has to walk two tightropes on Europe, and at the same time too. The first is to negotiate a deal with other European leaders that satisfies the bulk of his Euro-sceptic party. If this was not difficult enough, simultaneously Cameron has to show voters that the European question isn’t consuming all of his government’s energies. For despite its importance, it still rankles relatively low on the public’s list of priorities. To address the latter point, I’m told that Cameron will make a major domestic policy announcement in the week of every EU summit in an effort to show that he is not taking his eyes off the home front.

Who will speak up for Britain’s relationship with Europe? Even those abroad have noticed that the recent talk from the government and pressure groups has all been tinged with Euroscepticism. During David Cameron’s visit to France yesterday, the French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said he was unhappy with this attitude: ‘I find this process quite dangerous … The British population has got used to being repeatedly told: ‘Europe is a bad thing’, and the day they are asked to decide, the risk is that they will say well you told us: ‘Europe is a bad thing’.

In this week’s Queen’s Speech, the government promised as usual to cut red tape for businesses. But David Cameron is remarkable in his enthusiasm for simultaneously wrapping his own government in red tape. He has proposed a law to prevent the Chancellor raising rates of income tax, and in one of the last acts of the coalition he pushed through a law which commits British governments for ever after to spent at least 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) on international aid. There is little chance of the Prime Minister failing to meet his self-imposed spending target. Civil servants at the Department for International Development (DfiD) have proved themselves to be more than equal to the task of shovelling money in the direction of developing nations.