Only two years ago, ministers were praying that David Davis would come from behind to beat David Cameron in the Tory leadership contest. Senior members of Tony Blair’s government paid Cameron the backhanded compliment of attacking him as an inexperienced toff even before he was confirmed as party leader. He was the one they feared.
Were they right to do so? Cameron has both charisma and appeal in the eyes of a big slice of the electorate, although the mistakes he has made – his double U-turn over grammar schools, and flying to Rwanda while England was in the grip of flooding – would surely not have been made by Davis as leader.
Yet Cameron’s slip-ups are dwarfed by two huge problems which he can do little about. First, like William Hague before him, he faces a prime minister who is enjoying a honeymoon period, talking about change, and shrewdly using ‘big tent’ politics to marginalise the opposition.
Second, he is the latest victim of the seemingly insatiable appetite of the Tories to turn on their own. The right-wing commentators are in full cry, the ‘defections’ of his own MPs and donors to work with Labour are damaging to party morale.
And as he continues to try to extend Tory support beyond its core vote, it is inevitable that he will be condemned every step of the way by many of his party’s natural supporters.
For those of you who weren’t reading the Sun the other day, political editor George Pascoe-Watson wrote a ferocious attack on the proposals in the Conservative Quality of Life Report, which he said ‘would make life hell for most Sun readers’.
The article began: ‘What hope is there for the Tories when they listen to a man who thinks plastic dildos are threatening the planet? Multi-millionaire Zac Goldsmith believes sex toys are part of the man-made rise in global temperatures … It’s not hard to see why the rest of Goldsmith’s Quality of Life study should be dropped like a stone by David Cameron.’
Pascoe-Watson added for good measure: ‘Any report which includes a chapter entitled ‘The Darker Side of Wealth’ has no place on any self-respecting Tory’s bookshelf.’
Of course, Cameron is following Tony Blair by staging clashes with traditionalists in his own party in order to emphasise his own modernising credentials. But it is not enough to stage the fights; he has to be seen to win them.
When Brown scored a brilliant political coup by inviting Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street on the day that the Tories published their controversial green proposals, the prime minister’s supporters insisted that there was nothing Machiavellian about the move – it was just a courtesy extended to a former resident of No 10.
If that was the case, why didn’t John Major get an invite? Or could it be that a photo of Brown standing shoulder to shoulder on his front doorstep with an ex-premier associated with economic crisis might not have been such a coup, especially when the banks look a bit wobbly?
In the run-up to the 2005 election, when George Galloway was standing against Oona King, I asked neighbouring MP Jim Fitzpatrick how things were shaping up on the ground. He said Galloway looked unlikely to win, but risked splitting the vote and handing Bethnal Green & Bow to the Tories. At the time, I thought that seemed a bit improbable. When the results came in, Galloway polled 15,801 votes, with King on 14,975 and the Tories third on 6,244.
At the next election, Galloway says he will challenge Fitzpatrick. When I asked a local Blairite activist how things were shaping up, I was alarmed to be told: ‘Galloway won’t win, but he risks handing Poplar & Canning Town to the Tories.’