David cameron

As the chances of AV passing diminish, the Lib Dems are complaining with increasing volume about just how directly Nick Clegg is being targeted. Up to now, they have kept their concerns about what, they are calling, the swift boating of Nick Clegg relatively private. Last night, Chris Huhne said that he was “shocked that coalition partners can stoop to a level of campaign that we have not seen in this country before”. This morning, Paddy Ashdown has follow up on his phone call to Nick Robinson with a demand that David Cameron disassociate himself from the No campaign’s attacks on Clegg. This isn’t going to happen. Indeed, I suspect

David Cameron turned in an emollient performance on the Today Programme this morning. He declined to stoke the coalition row over immigration, heaped praise on Vince Cable and stressed that the Liberal Democrats have been good coalition partners. Even when pressed on the question of whether Britain would block Gordon Brown from becoming director of the International Monetary Fund, Cameron spoke softly. The only line of questioning in the interview that discomforted the Prime Minister was when Evan Davis pressed him on why a localist government was placing restrictions on what local government could charge residents for recycling or rubbish collection. Cameron seemed to think that Davis was asking him

It must be Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau season at the Commons’ film club. A string of odd political couples has stalked stages across the land this morning, supposedly pronouncing the merits or demerits of the alternative vote. David Cameron and John Reid were the oddest: the Prime Minister’s well-heeled insouciance contrasting with his lordship’s winking Glaswegian charm. It’s good fun, without being hugely constructive. Cameron and Reid joked that they agreed on nothing beyond FPTP, before embarking on a distended muse about party politics and that old canard ‘Britishness’. Things were little better for Ed Miliband, who spent a large portion of his conference listening to Vince Cable explain

This morning’s battle of the political odd couples shows the dangerous direction in which the AV referendum is going for the coalition. The Yes campaign are becoming ever closer to making explicit the argument that a yes vote is the best way to keep the Tories out. For their part, the No side are continuing to hammer the compromises of coalition and the unfairness of the party in third place determining the result. In other words, no more Lib Dems in government. These campaign strategies mean that the result of the referendum will be seen as a decisive rejection of one side or other of the coalition. This is precisely

Back in July 2003, Bruce Anderson wrote a piece on David Cameron for The Spectator. Its tone was summed up by its headline — “My hero” — and that tone has suffused through much of Bruce’s writing about the Tory leader since. Which is why his piece for the FT today is striking by virtue of its differentness. Its headline is that, “Cameron is losing touch with core Tories.” Its argument is that the Tory party is ignoring the hopes, fears and aspirations of the white middle classes. Admittedly, Bruce doesn’t put all this down to Cameron. On his account, there are demographic factors at play — not least that

The coalition’s decision to ‘pause’ its NHS reforms has left an open goal for its opponents, and they’ve been busy tapping the ball into this empty net this morning. At its conference up in Liverpool, the Royal College of Nursing has, predictably but embarrassingly, declared that it has no confidence in the health secretary. Back in London, Ed Miliband has been making hay while the sun shines attacking both the bill and the pause. His refrain at his press conference this morning was ‘the answer to a bad bill is not to slow it down but to junk it.’ Miliband’s performance this morning was striking for him speaking at a