David Davis offers his counsel in good faith

From his roost high on the backbenches, David Davis commands a luminescent eminence that he would not have had if he were a frontbencher. And as the current guardian of traditional right-wing Toryism, his words are clear against the often muddy context of coalition.

Talking to the Mail’s Andrew Pierce and Amanda Platell, he offers George Osborne and David Cameron some sagacious advice. He joins the chorus, now stalked by Ed Miliband, which urges the government to articulate its growth and recovery rhetoric.

‘We cannot be defined by a purely cuts agenda. If the only message the public takes away from the events of the next few months is one of retrenchment and loss of services, politically at least, we will have failed.’

He turns his ire on the coalition’s tax policy – reserving opprobrium for the 50 percent rate and capital gains tax hikes. Davis is recasting himself as an economics a guru, and he is unequivocal that low taxes will yield high growth.