Quietly, Cameron is preparing for his next big fight: the battle for Portsmouth

From tomorrow’s Spectator.

Downing Street aides nervously run through the symptoms: a flat economy, poor press, leadership mutterings. Then they say, ‘It’s just mid-term blues, isn’t it?’ A second later, they add nervously, ‘It’s nothing more serious than that, is it?’ The truth is, nobody can be certain. There’s no reliable way of distinguishing mid-term blues from something politically fatal.

Part of the problem is that few Tories have anything to compare their current mood with. After 13 years in opposition, only a handful of them have been in government before, let alone in the mid-term doldrums.

When I put this argument to one veteran of the Thatcher years, he delighted in pointing out that there was at least one person in No. 10 who knew what mid-term was like under Thatcher. Patrick Rock is Cameron’s policy fixer, having worked with him as a special adviser to Michael Howard in the Major years.