David Cameron needs Willie Whitelaw. He has Nick Clegg

David Cameron needs a Willie. So say the ministers who work most closely with No. 10. It is not a call for shock-and-awe radicalism, but for someone who can help the Prime Minister as the late Willie Whitelaw helped Margaret Thatcher — gliding around Whitehall, pushing forward the Cameron agenda, smoothing over difficulties and ensuring that Downing Street’s writ runs in every department.

Whitelaw did the job superbly for eight years; it is no coincidence that things started to go wrong for Lady Thatcher after a stroke forced him to give up his role. But Cameron doesn’t have a Willie. He has the opposite of a Willie: a Deputy Prime Minister who has his own interests to look after, his own policies to pursue and his own party to lead.

Coalition has made this arrangement a necessity. But it does make life that much more difficult for Cameron. As one minister observes, ‘It is a function of coalition government that the Prime Minister doesn’t have an enforcer as his deputy but someone with their own agenda.