David Blackburn

Britain is avowedly eurosceptic. But euroscepticism is not homogeneous; there are different tones of disgust. Many decry further political integration; others oppose Europe’s penchant for protectionism; some are wary of the EU’s apparent collective socialism; a few are essentially pro-European but believe too much sovereignty has been ceded; others hope to redefine Britain’s cultural and political relationship with the Continent, as a bridge between the Old World and the Anglosphere; most see Brussels as an affront to elective democracy; and a handful just want out and vote UKIP. So it has always been – perhaps one reason why William Hague’s ‘ticking time-bomb’ has not yet exploded.

Perhaps I’m alone in this, but David Cameron interviews better in print than he does on screen. He’s almost too polished on television. His supreme confidence and tendency to guffaw at his scripted jokes can grate. But in print his assurance has an affable, human quality. The Daily Mail has interviewed him today. Most of the piece is a lifestyle feature – Dave at home attending to Florence’s evening feed as he watches Newsnight. It is vacuous fare, but it strikes a brilliant contrast with Ed Miliband’s rout at the hands of the nation’s housewives on the Jeremy Vine Show, where there were echoes of Gordon Brown’s excruciating unease with the world beyond Westminster.

Come back, you insufferable relatives, all is forgiven: the political class has devoted an afternoon to trading insults about who said what about VAT and when. However, there have been some intriguing exchanges amid the New Politics’ latest outing. First, Labour seems to be fighting the two coalition partners as a single entity in Oldham East. Cameron, Clegg and Simon Hughes have received equal measures of opprobrium this afternoon and all have been lumped together. This was always a danger, but, as Fraser noted, Clegg and Cameron invited the manoeuvre by uniting their parties’ central operations in the cause of government. If Cameron and Clegg don’t differentiate in the general, Labour won't in the particular.

To accompany Fraser’s suggestion that Cameron and Clegg are planning a merger, it is notable that the ubiquitous Nick Boles has renewed his calls for a formal pact. Previously, Boles averred that Liberal Democrat ministers should be protected in three-way or Conservative-Liberal marginals. This time round, his argument is more philosophical. He told Radio 4’s PM: ‘The Coalition has enabled the Conservative party to be more radical than it would have been able to had it formed a government on its own with a small majority... Jacob Rees Mogg who’s a fellow MP who’s certainly not a sort of liberal Tory like I am in the sort of modernizing sense.