James Forsyth

Today’s letter from the Office of Budget Responsibility pointing out to David Cameron that the OBR’s growth forecasts have taken into account the effect of austerity on growth is embarrassing for the Prime Minister. This kind of letter is a gift to the opposition and Ed Balls has set about taking full advantage. Now, it is worth noting that Cameron’s comments in this case were more defensible than his ones about the national debt in the Conservative party political broadcast, which Fraser picked up on at the time. As government spin doctors have been vigorously arguing, Cameron was mainly talking about why growth has undershot the 2010 forecast which factored in the government’s deficit reduction programme.

David Cameron needs a Willie. So say the ministers who work most closely with No. 10. It is not a call for shock-and-awe radicalism, but for someone who can help the Prime Minister as the late Willie Whitelaw helped Margaret Thatcher — gliding around Whitehall, pushing forward the Cameron agenda, smoothing over difficulties and ensuring that Downing Street’s writ runs in every department. Whitelaw did the job superbly for eight years; it is no coincidence that things started to go wrong for Lady Thatcher after a stroke forced him to give up his role. But Cameron doesn’t have a Willie. He has the opposite of a Willie: a Deputy Prime Minister who has his own interests to look after, his own policies to pursue and his own party to lead.

Tonight’s meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs was dominated by calls for Sir David Nicholson to quit as NHS Chief Executive over the Mid Staffs scandal. Bill Cash, who was the MP for Stafford and now represents the Staffordshire seat of Stone, stood up and asked, ‘is there a single person in this room who thinks Nicholson shouldn’t go?’ Only one person indicated that they disagreed with Cash. I understand that more than 10 MPs followed Cash’s lead and made the case that Nicholson had to go if accountability in public life was to mean anything. Those calling for Nicholson’s departure were emphatically not the usual suspects. Indeed, I understand that ultra loyalist Charlie Elphicke was one of them.

This weekend David Cameron argued that the Tories are the ‘only party simultaneously committed to proper investment in the NHS and bringing down immigration'. This makes it all the odder that the Tories didn’t seize on Vince Cable’s comments on the Sunday Politics yesterday. The Business Secretary declared: ‘I’ve always been very critical of ring fencing but the policy under this government I accepted as part of the coalition arrangements.' In other words, if Cable—the senior Liberal Democrat economic spokesman—had his way, the health budget would not be ring-fenced. But this comment seems to have gone unnoticed by the Tories; there was no press release from a Tory MP highlighting it.

On The Sunday Politics today, Vince Cable told Andrew Neil that he disliked ring fencing particular departments. But he accepted that the NHS and DFID budgets would remain protected for the rest of this parliament Cable, who joked that he was being fingered as a shop steward of the National Union of Ministers, made clear that he opposed any further welfare cuts. When asked about Philip Hammond’s comments that welfare should be cut not defence, Cable responded by saying that the Ministry of Defence should scrap Trident. Interestingly, Cable conceded that capital spending was still too low and that he would push for further increases in it in the Budget. He indicated that George Osborne was sympathetic to this point of view.

Tonight brings two major developments in terms of Tory policy on the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Courts of Human Rights. The Mail on Sunday reports that Theresa May is close to announcing that under a post 2015, majority Tory government Britain would leave the Convention. All the articles of the Convention would be incorporated into a British Bill of Rights. But no one would be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. This would end stand-offs such as the one over prisoner voting where the Strasbourg Court is telling parliament it has to enfranchise convicted inmates. Under this system, the Supreme Court in this country really would be supreme.

It was a successful night for the Liberal Democrats in Eastleigh and a disastrous one for the Tories. The Liberal Democrats held on with a majority a touch over 1,700. While the Tories came third, polling more than a thousand votes behind UKIP who surged in to second place. Labour had nothing to cheer either, coming a poor fourth—a result that makes it hard for Ed Miliband to claim they are a ‘one nation’ party. There’ll be three immediate political consequences of this result. First, Nick Clegg’s position is strengthened. Holding the seat with a majority of more than a thousand, demonstrates that the Liberal Democrats are not in the dire position that the national polls suggest.

The Liberal Democrats have been beset by scandal in government. First there was the resignation of David Laws. Then there was the whole Chris Huhne business. And now there’s Lord Rennard and his alleged activities and the question of what the party hierarchy knew about them. But one thing unites all these stories: they all happened when the Liberal Democrats were in opposition. Indeed, no Liberal Democrat has yet had to resign for anything they’ve done in government. Their problem, as I say in the magazine this week, is that they are now paying the price for all the things they did when there was very little scrutiny on them. I doubt that either Labour or the Tories would have got away with an election pledge which was so clearly unafforadable as the tuition fees one.

George Osborne spent an hour in front of the 1922 this evening. 40 Tory MPs took the opportunity to promote their own Budget ideas to him. From what I understand, the tone of the meeting was cordial with Osborne in relaxed form. A big theme was the cost of living with three MPs including Rob Halfon pushing the Chancellor on fuel duty. Osborne’s responses were non-committal but significantly he didn’t say that binning the fuel duty rise scheduled for September was unaffordable. Instead, a distinct vibe was given off that these MPs concerns would be accommodated. Two other MPs-- Steve Brine and Henry Smith—made the case for a cut in air passenger duty, something that the influential chairman of the ’22 Graham Brady has been a public advocate of.

The Liberal Democrats have a different relationship to the popular press than the other two main parties, both more afraid and more contemptuous. This I suspect contributed to the slightly unwise tone of Nick Clegg’s statement last night. His declaration that ‘I will not stand by and allow my party to be subject to a show trial of innuendo, half-truths and slurs’ was hardly what you would expect from a party leader trying to show humility. One of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats are particularly sensitive to press coverage is the party’s memory of the unraveling of the Cleggmania. Until then, the Liberal Democrats had simply not been covered in the same way as the other two main parties. They then got two years of negative coverage in two weeks.