No, the Tory Detoxification Project is Not Complete.

There are times, I confess, when I wonder about politicians. They are a rum breed and it still seems possible to rise to quite elevated heights without possessing very much of an idea about anything. Consider the cabinet minister quoted in this Telegraph article:

Mr Cameron won the leadership promising to modernise the party, but one Cabinet minister said it should now “move on” to more “traditional” Conservative issues such as welfare reform and immigration control. “The ‘toxic’ issue has been neutralised,” the minister said. “Now we can move on to the red meat Conservative issues.”

Another minister said Mr Cameron should take to heart Lady Thatcher’s example and be prepared to risk unpopularity to force through the Government’s agenda.

Well, the second minister need have no worries on that front. As matters stand, Messrs Cameron and Osborne are quite accustomed to being unpopular. True, you might say, they have the worst of all worlds being unpopular and ineffective but that’s the way things crumble in times of sluggish economic growth.