Why Cameron should stand on the centre ground

Geoffrey Wheatcroft has a bizarre piece in today’s Guardian attacking Dave for hugging the “centre-ground” and for surrounding himself with a Blairesque “junta”. Too much energy is expended on defining – usually as a prelude to trashing – the concept of the “centre-ground”: it means no more or less than the political mainstream, what animates voters and makes them worried. Thus, the “centre-ground” should include a civilised response to people’s concerns over immigration, as much as an attention to environmental issues. Cameron, by the way, is perfectly well aware of this. As for Geoffrey’s attack on individuals such as Andy Coulson, Dave’s new communications director, and Michael Gove, his confidant and Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and the Family: all I can say is that Cameron should be so lucky to have people of this calibre in his inner circle. They are emphatically not the problem and it is contrarian in the extreme to suggest that they are.