The Spectator’s Notes | 9 December 2006

It is strange to find myself at odds with several fellow Thatcherites, but it seems to me obvious that David Cameron’s first year as Tory leader, which falls this week, has been a success. What his critics cannot get into their heads is that opposition is completely different from government. You can’t do: you must just be. So the first thing you have to be, particularly when people have long disliked your party, is nice. I read that focus groups say that Cameron has a ‘kind face’. Serious-minded people scoff at such things, but if voters thought he had an unkind face, the Tories would get nowhere. As for the reaction to his injunction about the need to show love for young criminals (misrepresented as ‘hug-a-hoodie’), some of it was slightly shocking. To say that criminals need to be loved does not imply that they should not be severely punished or that their victims should be ignored.