David cameron

Truce ditched. Peace deal scrapped. The parties agreed to revive Punch and Judy at PMQs today. Ed Miliband opened with bankers’ pay. RBS is seeking to give top traders bonuses of 100 per cent. This requires government approval.

Number 10 has appointed Tobias Ellwood has the Prime Minister's parliamentary adviser on this year's Nato summit, Coffee House has learned. Ellwood, who is currently PPS to Jeremy Hunt, will work as a link between MPs, peers and the Prime Minister. The summit will take place in Newport, Wales, on 4 and 5 September 2014. This is interesting, not just because Number 10 is still making strenuous efforts to improve the Prime Minister's relations with the rest of his party (although in my Telegraph column today I examine whether one such effort, the Number 10 policy board, is really all it's cracked up to be). Ellwood was PPS to Liam Fox when he was Defence Secretary until Fox resigned from his job in October 2011.

One of the genuine seasonal pleasures to be enjoyed as 2013 slipped around the U-bend was Enoch Powell making his familiar comeback as the Evil Ghost of Christmases Past. Enoch was disinterred by the producers of the hitherto un-noticed Murnaghan Show — presumably in order to frighten the viewers and put a spanner in the wheel of the programme’s principal guest interviewee, the Ukip leader Nigel Farage. Dermot Murnaghan tripped up Mr Farage by the devilishly clever tactic of reading him some anodyne quotes from Powell’s exciting and controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and asking Farage if he agreed with them. But only later did he reveal that they were the words of the sulphurous Antichrist Powell! Brilliant.

It’s a whole new kind of politics. The subdued atmosphere at PMQs had two possible causes. First, the tragic death of Paul Goggins had stunned the House into near silence. Ed Miliband seemed close to tears as he paid his tribute. ‘Labour has lost one of its own, and one of its best.’ Moving to more substantial issues, Miliband chose the neutral topics of monsoons and roulette machines. He saluted the work of the flood-wardens and the efforts of courageous citizens who had leapt to each others’ aid during the storms. Cameron replied by vowing that river defences would be reinforced with huge sandbags stuffed with cash. Then Miliband moved to fixed-odds betting machines.

One of the most significant things about David Cameron's Sunday Times interview today was something he didn't say. The Prime Minister made maintaining the triple lock for pensions for the next Parliament 'the first plank of the next general election manifesto', but he didn't make any 'read-my-lips' promises about anything else related to those of pensionable age. Why not? Did this mean the Conservatives are going to drop their support for universal pensioner benefits such as the winter fuel payment and free bus passes? His interview on Marr suggested that this could well happen.

David Cameron's New Year message (and his accompanying Times op-ed) is an upbeat call to stick with the Tories to get the job done. He writes of his desire to 'turn Britain into the flagship post-Great Recession success story. A country that is on the rise'. And in his video message he focuses on the signs that the country is already rising. Downing Street is keen to stress that this message is no Blair/Brown-style relaunch of the government with a shiny new logo and a plan. It is the Prime Minister trying to encourage optimism about Britain's best days lying ahead of it, but that 'recovery is real, but it’s also fragile'.

Today's Sunday Times revives reports that senior Conservatives are concerned that Alex Salmond will prevail in next year's referendum and that David Cameron will be the last British Prime Minister. Personally, I'd be concerned if they were not concerned - Salmond is a formidable late-stage campaigner and the 'no' side is, in effect, being led by the parties out of whom he made mincemeat in the last Scottish Parliament election. The future of our country is at stake: now is not the time to take anything for granted. Especially at a time when unionist parties in Scotland have been collectively spanked by a formidable and well-funded SNP campaign. But what about specific concerns about Alistair Darling's leadership of the campaign?

After a seasonal interlude, rival Tories are back to doing what they do best: warring over the heart and soul of the party. In the cuddly corner, we have Bright Blue; a think tank of hoody-huggers who are imploring the PM to be nice to immigrants. The Guardian has been purring with approval since Bright Blue’s director Ryan Shorthouse ‘specifically called for the Tory Party to adopt a Liberal-Conservative manifesto for the election’: ‘At the moment, the messaging is quite negative and uninspiring – it's not enough to win voters and gain momentum. We need to be more inspiring and bigger picture than that and we need a positive vision, not just pandering to prejudice and uncertainty and anger. There has been a surge in Ukip, but you can't outdo Ukip.

In my interview with David Cameron in the current Christmas edition of The Spectator, there wasn't enough space for everything - including his thoughts on press regulation. We did discuss it, in the back of his car, and he warned that the press is playing a dangerous game in its defiance — i.e., refusing to sign up to the Politicians' Charter. This was an elegant and voluntary compromise, he said, and the alternative may be compulsory statutory regulation enforced by an illiberal Labour government. After the publication of the Leveson Report in November last year, Cameron spoke very eloquently about the danger of statutory regulation - rejecting regulation which 'has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press'.

Fair's fair. Ed Miliband might be a fish-faced ninny but that doesn't let David Cameron off the hook. And not just because he's trailing a fish-faced ninny in the polls. No, the Prime Minister can be a terrible poltroon himself. Witness his witless suggestion today that the United Kingdom might veto future EU enlargement unless something is done to  thwart "vast migrations" of people. It is a silly thing to say for a number of reasons and the first of those is that Cameron is in no position to make any such suggestion. He cannot bind future British governments and since there is no immediate prospect of any country being accepted into the EU club it's not likely to be a decision he will ever have to make anyway.