If you want to know why David Cameron is going to lose the next election, don’t look at the Department of Health, don’t look at the Treasury, and don’t look at the Department for Work and Pensions. Look instead at the Department for International Development. Since Cameron became Tory leader, DFID the fulcrum of Tory modernisation. It’s not that ringfencing the DFID budget won any votes, but, as with the largely ornamental decision to scrap Clause IV, it was a statement of intent, that this was a different kind of Conservatism. And there, right at the beginning, was Andrew Mitchell, a serious thinker on international development, the only genuine development heavyweight the Conservatives possessed. And where is he now? At the Whips’ Office. That’s Cameroonism Mark II: no wasted time on poverty-reduction in foreign lands. Far better to spend the time threatening fortysomethings in a Victorian corridor.

Like an ill-conceived symphony, Cameron’s first reshuffle started with a duff note, and got worse. I’m not sure that he can be said to have ‘lurched’ to the right; that implies a sense of purpose that was sadly lacking. It’s more accurate to say he stumbled to the right. If he’d appointed Chris Grayling – a man who has supported a colour bar for homosexual people – to the Ministry of Justice as part of some elaborate design, then that would be bad enough, but it’s all the more revealing that he’s done so by accident. He wanted to get rid of Kenneth Clarke, to appease his rabid flank, but when Iain Duncan Smith refused – think about that, a prime minister forced to kowtow to IDS, there’s a sentence you would have laughed at in 2002 – to move to Justice, he was forced to turn to the unsuitable Grayling.

As far as women are concerned, at least he was consistent: in cabinet as in the country, Cameron has sent more women out of the office and back to their homes than any prime minister since the second world war.  But even that was botched: Caroline Spelman has had the mark of Cain on her forehead for two years now, and if Cameron genuinely wanted a third of his government be made of women, he would have lined up any number of possible replacements. Instead, he was left negotiating with Justine Greening for almost an hour on live television, and was forced to recall Theresa Villiers, who was judged not ready for prime time two years ago and has done nothing to suggest different. The only area Cameron has been a pioneer in is appointing zombie ministers. He now has Kenneth Clarke as Minister for Pretending To Care About The Liberal Democrats, and Sayeeda Warsi as Minister for Pretending To Care About Ethnic Minorities. Warsi – the only non-white face at the cabinet – won’t even have a vote.

The biggest question about ‘Cameroonism’ – which was and is in many respects, with its critique of our increasingly divided body politic and its recognition of the limits of state power, not the worst idea in the world  – was whether or not Cameron himself really believed in it. Now we can say for sure that liberal conservatism was just a difficult phase he was going to, until he met the right tax cut. Cameron claimed that he wanted to rebuild a Conservative majority for the 21st century, but he’s now at the head of a cabinet that’s more unrepresentative of Britain than any government since the 1930s.

That’s an opportunity for Labour – and Ed Miliband should seize it, by reshuffling the shadow cabinet to bring in a 50-50 gender balance and by bringing in experts and heavyweights from outside the usual areas, as Cameron did so effectively in opposition – but it’s also a danger for the country. Don’t forget that the worst of the cuts have yet to bite, that there’s still a storm brewing in the eurozone and that across the country people are struggling to make ends meet. There’s never been a worse time for the government of Britain to be so utterly divorced from the lives and hopes of ordinary people. Public anger with the government will only increase, and, if Labour isn’t careful, the beneficiaries won’t be the centre-left, but parties of the radical extreme.

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Stephen Bush writes a weekly column for Progress, the Tuesday review, and tweets @stephenkb

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Photo: Cabinet Office