James Forsyth

The Conservative side of the coalition is being increasingly split by the issue of the European Convention on Human Rights. After the Supreme Court in London declared that human rights legislation required that sex offenders had to be given a chance to take their names off the register, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister were appalled. In a statement to the Commons, May made some trenchant criticisms of the court ruling. This, I understand, prompted a furious letter from Clarke, the Justice Secretary, to May reminding her that she was constitutionally obliged to accept the independence of the judiciary. The letter was copied to Downing Street as the Prime Minister himself had used very similar language to May.

The spending figures from the Oldham East and Saddleworth campaign have been released tonight and they show just how much the Tories soft-pedaled their campaign there. The numbers, which Michael Crick has blogged on, reveal that the Tories spent less than half what their coalition partners spent in the content, £39,432 to £94,540. Labour, who held the seat, expended the most, £97,085. Indeed, even the UKIP campaign was more expensive than the Tory one. These figures show just how absurd it was for the Tories to claim that they were fighting a normal, style by-election campaign. There was clearly a deliberate decision to go easy in the seat to give the Liberal Democrat candidate the best chance possible.

Tomorrow both Clegg and Cameron will give speeches on AV, Clegg for and Cameron against. They’ll be very civil about their disagreement. But the truth is that one of them has to lose in this vote and the loser will have a very unhappy party on his hands. As Steve Richards points out in The Independent today, there’s been a lot more talk of the consequences for Clegg of AV going down than of what happens to Cameron if it passes. But Cameron would have almost as many problems if it passes as Clegg would if it failed. Fairly or not, a large number of Tory MPs will blame Cameron if Britain ends up with AV.

When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership, there was much speculation that he’d be ‘Kinnocked’ by The Sun. His brother David had been the favoured News International candidate and ‘Red Ed’, as The Sun dubbed him, offered a fair few targets. But the paper has been giving the Labour leader a hearing in recent weeks. Ed Miliband has been to The Sun for dinner and today’s he written for the paper, attacking Cameron for breaking his promises on crime — classic Sun territory. Partly this rapprochement is a product of the fact that Labour are ahead in the polls. No paper can take the risk of writing Miliband off as a loser in the way that Hague and IDS were.

The most interesting question in politics right now is, to my mind, what does David Cameron really think about how his premiership is going? Does he subscribe to the view that the coalition is getting the big things right and that the numerous u-turns that Fraser referred to in his post really don’t matter that much. Or does he worry that the government is failing to communicate a message and that his defining political project—the big society—is coming under rapidly increasing fire. My own view is that the truth rests somewhere between these two statements. But my feeling has been that Cameron is too blasé about how Downing Street is functioning.