Theresa may

The less we hear from Theresa May, the more I worry about the Home Office budget. I’m hearing rumours of her taking a 30 percent cut, which I first dismissed as a piece of expectations management. But now I’m beginning to wonder. We know that defence is settled - about an 8 percent real-terms cut. The NHS, which absorbs a quarter of government spending, will have real-terms increases (something even the left-leaning IPPR doesn’t back). The schools budget has escaped relatively unscathed, we read. So what’s left? Again, there’s so much deliberate misinformation out there that I hesitate to give a rumour round-up. But here goes.   One major victim is expected to be Transport.

I wonder if Theresa May felt faintly apprehensive this morning. It must bad enough to awake and remember that you’re the Home Secretary, held responsible for every immigrant, every strike and every crime committed in Britain. Northern Ireland is more poisoned ministerial chalice, just. Now, she is being shadowed by Ed Balls, a ravening attack-dog liberated by the opposition. Balls has re-invented himself as a traditional Labour politician, casting himself as the champion of the working class. He says, accurately, that the poor are the victims of crime and the victims of unbridled immigration and social dislocation and his opposition will be ardently authoritarian. May will have to cut police numbers: Balls will attack her.

Perceptions count and the coalition are perceived to be vulnerable on crime. Its policy of reducing the number of prisoners on short-term sentences has been caricatured as a reduction in sentencing per se, a liberal assault on the consensus that prison works. I don’t agree with that analysis (which overlooks that excessive sentences in disorganised and overcrowded prison can create habitual criminals, who cost society in perpetuity thereafter) but readily concede that it’s easy to traduce the government as soft on crime, and I was surprised that Ed Miliband didn’t do so last week – as were plenty of Tories. In fact, opposition comes from within the Tory party, even from the government.

Back in June, I asked how long the public would stomach David Cameron blaming Labour. Not long, was my answer - the government would have to form a narrative that suggested it was the ‘great reforming government’, not a symposium of partisan budget balancers. So far, it has failed to compel of cuts’ and public service reform’s necessity. Crime can now be added to the list. Theresa May has blamed Labour for HMIC’s findings into the police’s failure to arrest anti-social behaviour. ‘Labour achieved nothing,’ she said. Fair enough, but this was an opportunity to husband a narrative for public service reform. HMIC is in no doubt that the police have not done enough to combat anti-social behaviour.

Theresa May channeled Chris Tavaré today, every question on this phone tapping scandal was met with a solid defensive answer. She was helped by the number of Labour MPs who overreached — one compared it to Watergate while Dennis Skinner, who is nowhere near the Commons performer he once was, produced an ill-judged demand that Cameron come to the Commons and sack Coulson. Those MPs who were most effective were the ones who kept their cool. The personal testimony of Chris Bryant was particularly powerful.   Perhaps, the most noteworthy element of the proceedings was how a particularly glum looking Ming Campbell and Simon Hughes kept whispering to each other with concerned expressions on their faces. Neither man appeared to be happy with May’s answers.

Oh dear, the Treasury is mired in another controversy about equality after the Guardian published a letter which Theresa May sent to George Osborne before the Budget. In it, she warned that the government could face legal action if it is unable to show that its decisions were made with a consideration to "existing race, disability and gender equality duties." As she puts it: "If there are no processes in place to show that equality issues have been taken into account in relate to particular decisions, there is a real risk of successful legal challenge by, for instance, recipients of public services, Trade Unions or other groups affected by these decisions.

David Cameron's so-called “referendum lock" is supposed to ensure no more powers are handed to the EU. His thinking, bless him, is that if he just keeps a low profile and doesn't sign any extra treaties then things won't get worse. This fundamentally mistakes the way the EU works. As we say in the leader for this week's magazine, ever-greater integration is hardwired into the system. An example we cite is the coming European Investigatory Order, which Theresa May has naively described to other ministers as a tidying up exercise (Jack Straw said the same about the EU constitution).  As we put it: “Another power grab is looming. Plans are being drawn up for a European order that would mandate British police officers to follow requests lodged from overseas.

I doubt David Cameron will have many better days in government than this. Considering the government cancelled a hospital project yesterday, today has passed as one long photo-op, free of incident. It began with Theresa May banning a radical Islamist cleric, Zakir Naik, displaying a resolve that eluded her immediate predecessors. The papers were full of Cameron’s ‘coup’ in Brussels yesterday; the only major news story that might have unnerved Cameron was the FT’s research into Tory immigration policy, which the FT calculates will hit growth and raise taxes. It was too esoteric to hit the TV screens, so too the cuts in arts funding. It must have been a happy breakfast in No 10 this morning.

Spare a thought for poor Theresa May. Judging by the reaction so far, she now faces the unenviable task of shouldering almost everyone’s preconceptions about Tory women in government – with Caroline Spelman, Baroness Warsi and the lower-profile Cheryl Gillan for back-up. She will no doubt continue to disappoint feminists and irritate reactionaries, and she will do so while responsible for the notoriously unwieldy Home Office, which has rapidly taken over from the Department of Health as the ministry where political careers go to die. Representation in politics does matter. It is not unreasonable to claim, as Katharine Viner did in Thursday’s Guardian, that “democracies simply don't work unless they represent those they govern”.

Theresa May is chairing a discussion with a set of Conservative PPCs on 'job clubs', as part of this afternoon's focus on welfare reform.  She kicks off asking one of the Tory PPCs on the panel, Maggie Throup, to talk about job clubs in her area: "So, Maggie, tell us about...". Problem is, May addresses her remarks at the wrong PPC, Suzy Davis. Mistake realised, she wheels round and puts the same question to the actual Maggie Throup.  Not a good start. It's picked up since. The welfare adviser David Freud, who jumped ship from Labour to the Tories, is now on stage. And he gets a cheer when he says "I've always been a Conservative.". This is a significant time for Freud.

In some respects, Theresa May has delivered an effective speech on unemployment and the benefits system today.  It touches on all the tragic indicators - the 6 million people on out-of-work benefits, the high levels of youth worklessness, the shocking consequences of welfare ghettoes etc. - and re-states, in no uncertain terms, the Tories' commitment to welfare reform.  She even partially responds to those critics who thought she'd been drafted into the shadow welfare role to be "softer" on single mums than Labour, by instead attacking the state for encouraging lone parents "not to bother trying to work until their youngest child was sixteen".