Cameron’s strength is that he does not throw his weight about

The most unexpected characteristic so far of the Cameron leadership of the Conservative party is caution. Westminster had been braced for some kind of spectacular announcement, or perhaps a series of announcements, signalling dramatic change. This has not been forthcoming. The day Cameron got elected a friend of mine rang up.

‘It’s all up,’ he said. ‘It’s finished.’

‘Surely Cameron isn’t as bad as all that,’ I replied.

‘I don’t mean Dave,’ he said. ‘I mean me. I’ll never get a seat now.’

My friend is a white, middle-class male in his late thirties. He has struggled up the system, fighting a hopeless seat, never wasting the opportunity to ingratiate himself with constituency chairmen, heads of candidate selection, party functionaries, however obscure, local newspaper editors or anybody who might conceivably be of any use to him whatsoever in his indefatigable and quite shameless search for a secure constituency. There was no consoling the poor fellow.