David Cameron can’t win the next election in the next three weeks, but he can lose it. If the floods see the government forfeit its reputation for competence, then the coalition parties won’t get the credit they need for the economic recovery. As John Major’s experience after Black Wednesday showed, once a government is no longer seen as competent, it doesn’t receive any of the credit for the good things that happen on its watch.
Number 10 is acutely conscious of this and, as I say in the column this week, the whole building from the Prime Minister to the Policy Unit is now working on the government’s response. One normally level-headed official tells me that the place is ‘on a war footing‘.
There are two parts to showing that the government has a grip. The first is dealing with the floods now that they have hit.
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