David cameron

Boris being Boris, he has managed to rule something out without actually ruling anything out at all. As Isabel noted this morning, the Mayor of London has said he will not stand for Parliament before 2015, and will remain in City Hall as promised until 2016. Which is not the same as ruling out standing in the 2015 election. The latest Boris v Osborne twists have allowed speculation about a post-Cameron age to rise to the surface again, and having spoken to Tory MPs over the last few weeks, it is obvious that said speculation is never far from their lips. 2015 is still a white-knuckle fight, but that’s not to say plans are not afoot were it all to go very wrong for the PM.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_27_February_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman on why the two party political system is dying" startat=1207] Listen [/audioplayer]Two things will make the next general election campaign quite unlike any previous election in this country. The first is that we now have four-party politics right across Britain. In Scotland and Wales, the nationalist parties have been a political force for a generation. But the big change is in England, where Ukip is emerging as a fourth force. Second, the campaign will be haunted by the spectre of another hung parliament. The question of what happens if no party wins an overall majority will be asked time and time again by an impatient media.

Earlier this week David Cameron threatened the Lib Dems with divorce. Today, two of their senior figures offered to kiss and make up. Sir Alan Beith and Sir Bob Russell, bearing their knighthoods like dented old battle-shields, made their overtures at PMQs. Each of these leathery old libertarians seems to have discovered his inner Tory. Sir Alan went first. He invited Cameron to slap down rogue Anglicans who dare to criticise welfare reform. ‘There’s nothing moral about pouring more borrowed money into systems that trap people in poverty,’ he said. Cameron accepted Sir Alan’s invitation for a waltz.

While Number 10 is pouring cold water on suggestions that the Prime Minister might rule out a second coalition in the 2015 manifesto, his MPs have given it a rather icy reception. If the hints about him preferring a minority government to governing with the Lib Dems were supposed to reassure those on the Right that he does love them more than he loves Nick Clegg, they seem to have backfired rather. Instead, Conservative MPs I've spoken to today are annoyed for a variety of reasons. The first is that backbenchers feel any plan to rule out a coalition in the manifesto is counterproductive. It's worth noting that Number 10 sources are insisting that 'our manifesto is about policy' rather than giving any suggestion that there would be a commitment on minority government in the document.

David Cameron says he wants the case that he makes for the Union and against Scottish independence to be 'unremittingly positive'. Is it? In an interview with BBC News, the Prime Minister said: 'That’s my whole argument, which is go back to the big picture, and I think this family of nations is better off together. Not just is better off in the United Kingdom, but we in the rest of the United Kingdom think we’re better off with Scotland that we want you to stay. That argument is one that is unremittingly positive about the success of this family of nations and how we should keep this family together.

Angela Merkel is getting the full red carpet treatment when she visits next week. In a 24 hour visit, she'll address both Houses of Parliament and meet the Queen. These honours are being heaped on her because she is Cameron's indispensable ally. Merkel is so vital to Cameron because as the most important person in the most important country in Europe she holds the key to his plan to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership. If she is prepared to offer encouragement to this, then Cameron's plan is credible. If she's not, then it isn't. Several of the other big European players, notably the French, would be happy to cut Britain out of any future treaty talks by simply using an inter-governmental treaty rather than an EU one to define the governance of the Eurozone.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_20_February_2014_v4.mp3" title="James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss Cameron's relationship with Merkel" startat=1204] Listen [/audioplayer]British politicians still prize a visit from the President of the United States above all others. Yet no American President has been as important to a British Prime Minister, in domestic political terms, as the German Chancellor is to David Cameron. Angela Merkel is the person who can both help him keep his party together as it approaches the next election and then, with luck, deliver his promised renegotiation of Britain’s EU membership. For Cameron, Merkel — far more than Barack Obama — is the indispensable ally.

With Ukip heading for possible victory in the European elections and anti-EU fervour growing across the continent, it is hard to imagine a country where people are so desperate to join the EU that they are prepared to take on water canon in order to make their point. But that country is Ukraine. The violence which has been brewing for weeks and which erupted yesterday has its source in many tensions in the country, but one issue defines the two sides: protesters who are looking westwards towards EU membership and a government which rejects this and looks eastwards towards Russia.