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| How convincing was David Cameron’s Commons statement? | How convincing was David Cameron’s Commons statement? |
| (6 months later) | |
| Rafael Behr: ‘The cracks in the party are too wide’ | Rafael Behr: ‘The cracks in the party are too wide’ |
| The ostensible purpose of David Cameron’s statement in the Commons was a report on last week’s European Council summit, but Downing Street had let it be known that he would use the occasion to mop up some of the mess on the floor left by the resignation on Friday of Iain Duncan Smith. | The ostensible purpose of David Cameron’s statement in the Commons was a report on last week’s European Council summit, but Downing Street had let it be known that he would use the occasion to mop up some of the mess on the floor left by the resignation on Friday of Iain Duncan Smith. |
| Cameron did not even try to elide the two elements. He extolled the merits of a new EU migration deal, with special emphasis on Britain’s exemptions from the Schengen open-borders arrangements. He then performed a gear-crunching, rubber-burning change of direction to sing the praises both of Duncan Smith and George Osborne, as if they were happy partners in a harmonious “modern, compassionate, one-nation, Conservative government”; as if the first object of his compliments, IDS, had not, just a few days earlier, plunged a knife firmly into the second – his “friend” the chancellor. | Cameron did not even try to elide the two elements. He extolled the merits of a new EU migration deal, with special emphasis on Britain’s exemptions from the Schengen open-borders arrangements. He then performed a gear-crunching, rubber-burning change of direction to sing the praises both of Duncan Smith and George Osborne, as if they were happy partners in a harmonious “modern, compassionate, one-nation, Conservative government”; as if the first object of his compliments, IDS, had not, just a few days earlier, plunged a knife firmly into the second – his “friend” the chancellor. |
| This was a coded call for truce. Cameron rattled through his checklist of claims to be running a progressive, reforming administration – the “living wage”, prisoner rehabilitation plans, anti-discrimination measures – all underpinned with the rationale that none of it would be possible without fiscal rigour. It was the bite-sized version of his conference speech last autumn: the case for a second Cameron term in office that will shine as a beacon of modernity just as soon as that pesky European referendum is out of the way. But things have moved on since then. Then his benefit-of-the-doubt account was in credit from recent election victory. Now it’s overdrawn. | This was a coded call for truce. Cameron rattled through his checklist of claims to be running a progressive, reforming administration – the “living wage”, prisoner rehabilitation plans, anti-discrimination measures – all underpinned with the rationale that none of it would be possible without fiscal rigour. It was the bite-sized version of his conference speech last autumn: the case for a second Cameron term in office that will shine as a beacon of modernity just as soon as that pesky European referendum is out of the way. But things have moved on since then. Then his benefit-of-the-doubt account was in credit from recent election victory. Now it’s overdrawn. |
| Tory MPs dutifully cheered at the end of the statement but they were pretty stony-faced while their leader was speaking. The cracks in the party are just too wide to be covered by Cameron’s depleted stocks of clear blue paint. | Tory MPs dutifully cheered at the end of the statement but they were pretty stony-faced while their leader was speaking. The cracks in the party are just too wide to be covered by Cameron’s depleted stocks of clear blue paint. |
| Anne Perkins: ‘Cameron will get a rougher ride from the 1922 committee’ | Anne Perkins: ‘Cameron will get a rougher ride from the 1922 committee’ |
| Early signs from Westminster suggest the Tory party has been restarted for the week in safe mode. After two days of the kind of febrile back-stabbing and score-settling that has barely surfaced since the mid-1990s, and Monday morning’s newspaper headlines about revolt and rebellion, the party’s survival instincts were reactivated, at least for now. | Early signs from Westminster suggest the Tory party has been restarted for the week in safe mode. After two days of the kind of febrile back-stabbing and score-settling that has barely surfaced since the mid-1990s, and Monday morning’s newspaper headlines about revolt and rebellion, the party’s survival instincts were reactivated, at least for now. |
| The prime minister had two advantages: he had already trailed that the PIP cuts had been abandoned, and he was reporting on last Friday’s EU summit, allowing him to stress how many things Britain wasn’t doing to support EU attempts to cope with the refugee crisis. He had the extra bonus of announcing that there had been a deal on the grotesquely unfair tampon tax. But of the advertised defence of compassionate Conservatism, there was almost nothing of substance. Love-bombing Duncan Smith and the six years he had been in cabinet implementing, er, cuts to welfare is not the same. | The prime minister had two advantages: he had already trailed that the PIP cuts had been abandoned, and he was reporting on last Friday’s EU summit, allowing him to stress how many things Britain wasn’t doing to support EU attempts to cope with the refugee crisis. He had the extra bonus of announcing that there had been a deal on the grotesquely unfair tampon tax. But of the advertised defence of compassionate Conservatism, there was almost nothing of substance. Love-bombing Duncan Smith and the six years he had been in cabinet implementing, er, cuts to welfare is not the same. |
| No wonder Cameron looked so calm: Duncan Smith’s leaving gift is effectively an end to all-new welfare cuts for the rest of parliament (although there are some fierce ones in the pipeline): some are already warning that will mean tax increases before long. | No wonder Cameron looked so calm: Duncan Smith’s leaving gift is effectively an end to all-new welfare cuts for the rest of parliament (although there are some fierce ones in the pipeline): some are already warning that will mean tax increases before long. |
| Many Duncan Smith supporters were torn between carrying on the devastating internal argument over divisive and unfair cuts and trying to make the case against the EU and the suggestion that Turkey is now on track for full membership. Only one or two managed to combine the two questions. It is always easier to deal with opposition attacks than of the enemies behind you. | Many Duncan Smith supporters were torn between carrying on the devastating internal argument over divisive and unfair cuts and trying to make the case against the EU and the suggestion that Turkey is now on track for full membership. Only one or two managed to combine the two questions. It is always easier to deal with opposition attacks than of the enemies behind you. |
| There are other signs that a major fire-fighting operation is under way. The chancellor ducked a roasting by dint of just not turning up to answer John McDonnell’s urgent question. Cameron will talk to the 1922 committee of backbenchers this week too. He will get a rougher ride there, in semi-private, than he had on Monday afternoon. | There are other signs that a major fire-fighting operation is under way. The chancellor ducked a roasting by dint of just not turning up to answer John McDonnell’s urgent question. Cameron will talk to the 1922 committee of backbenchers this week too. He will get a rougher ride there, in semi-private, than he had on Monday afternoon. |
| The party’s disquiet over the power wielded by the Dave’n’George duopoly is out of the box, and it won’t go away any time soon. | The party’s disquiet over the power wielded by the Dave’n’George duopoly is out of the box, and it won’t go away any time soon. |
| Simon Jenkins: ‘Cameron tossed his critics aside with consummate skill’ | Simon Jenkins: ‘Cameron tossed his critics aside with consummate skill’ |
| David Cameron is never more like Tony Blair than with his back to the wall. | David Cameron is never more like Tony Blair than with his back to the wall. |
| He woke up on Monday morning with a senior minister gone, a chancellor in disgrace, a party in disarray and an unprecedented overnight hole of £4.4bn in his budget. He put on his darkest suit and soberest tie and put on a look of serene seriousness. At the dispatch box he waved his hand in the air and declared two great British victories, for the Royal Navy against the dastardly people smugglers and for himself against tampon taxes. | He woke up on Monday morning with a senior minister gone, a chancellor in disgrace, a party in disarray and an unprecedented overnight hole of £4.4bn in his budget. He put on his darkest suit and soberest tie and put on a look of serene seriousness. At the dispatch box he waved his hand in the air and declared two great British victories, for the Royal Navy against the dastardly people smugglers and for himself against tampon taxes. |
| Commons procedure always helps the government. Cameron arrived with MPs exhausted by 45 minutes on the budget fiasco. He knew to rise above it and discuss his recent European summit. He began in full statesman mode, boasting that Britain had done more than any other country in Europe in helping Syrian refugees. No sooner were we blinking with disbelief at this news, than he trumpeted the war on sanitary products, which apparently proved the virtue of Britain’s EU membership. | Commons procedure always helps the government. Cameron arrived with MPs exhausted by 45 minutes on the budget fiasco. He knew to rise above it and discuss his recent European summit. He began in full statesman mode, boasting that Britain had done more than any other country in Europe in helping Syrian refugees. No sooner were we blinking with disbelief at this news, than he trumpeted the war on sanitary products, which apparently proved the virtue of Britain’s EU membership. |
| Surely, Cameron seemed to say, a man who could repeal a tampon tax should not have to worry about a £4.4bn hole in a budget. | Surely, Cameron seemed to say, a man who could repeal a tampon tax should not have to worry about a £4.4bn hole in a budget. |
| That could wait for the morrow. We should all sing a hymn to “sound finances” and agree it was a good thing “not to burden our children with debts we lacked the guts to repay”. | That could wait for the morrow. We should all sing a hymn to “sound finances” and agree it was a good thing “not to burden our children with debts we lacked the guts to repay”. |
| The House of Commons is a showroom not a court. It mesmerises foreigners because of its immediacy and appearance of political bloodlust. But it is more like all-in wrestling, staged by experts and leaving few bruises. Cameron tossed his crisis aside with consummate skill. His battles, he knows well, must be fought elsewhere – and with no such certain outcome. | The House of Commons is a showroom not a court. It mesmerises foreigners because of its immediacy and appearance of political bloodlust. But it is more like all-in wrestling, staged by experts and leaving few bruises. Cameron tossed his crisis aside with consummate skill. His battles, he knows well, must be fought elsewhere – and with no such certain outcome. |
| Martin Kettle: ‘This was the most dangerous moment in Cameron’s premiership’ | Martin Kettle: ‘This was the most dangerous moment in Cameron’s premiership’ |
| David Cameron went to the Commons on Monday to try to douse a daunting outbreak of potentially lethal political problems. They included putting his government’s budget back together, bolstering his damaged ally the chancellor, and trying to calm the Tory party’s Brexit wing after Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation. This was not a normal day at the office. | David Cameron went to the Commons on Monday to try to douse a daunting outbreak of potentially lethal political problems. They included putting his government’s budget back together, bolstering his damaged ally the chancellor, and trying to calm the Tory party’s Brexit wing after Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation. This was not a normal day at the office. |
| Any one of these – a flagship policy in disarray, senior ministers quitting and settling scores, the backbenches in uproar – would be a mortal challenge to Cameron’s authority on its own. All of them together made this quite simply the most dangerous moment in Cameron’s premiership. By putting himself on the line – both he and his party know that Cameron remains his party’s most bankable electoral asset – he almost certainly won himself time and space to regain control, at least for now. | Any one of these – a flagship policy in disarray, senior ministers quitting and settling scores, the backbenches in uproar – would be a mortal challenge to Cameron’s authority on its own. All of them together made this quite simply the most dangerous moment in Cameron’s premiership. By putting himself on the line – both he and his party know that Cameron remains his party’s most bankable electoral asset – he almost certainly won himself time and space to regain control, at least for now. |
| The former party leader Lord Howard and the communities secretary, Greg Clark, were sent out earlier in the day to roll the pitch. Then, first in public in the Commons and later in an expected private address to the backbench 1922 Committee, Cameron tried to steady his party’s nerves. This is one of his skills. Tory discipline in public has held for now – and at a time like this it is important to win the day. | The former party leader Lord Howard and the communities secretary, Greg Clark, were sent out earlier in the day to roll the pitch. Then, first in public in the Commons and later in an expected private address to the backbench 1922 Committee, Cameron tried to steady his party’s nerves. This is one of his skills. Tory discipline in public has held for now – and at a time like this it is important to win the day. |
| How far that discipline can go on holding as the EU referendum nears is another question. Brexit is not an academic argument for its advocates. It is the opportunity of a political lifetime. For some it is the fatherland or death. | How far that discipline can go on holding as the EU referendum nears is another question. Brexit is not an academic argument for its advocates. It is the opportunity of a political lifetime. For some it is the fatherland or death. |
| But Cameron’s challenge clearly goes much further even than these issues, big though they are. His real and deeper problem, the one at the root of all of the above, is one that has haunted his decade as party leader and still haunts it today – his continuing failure to define the modern Conservative party’s broad purposes adequately in ways that both unite his party and command wider confidence. That absence, which is so apparent over Europe, opened the way for the IDS of March. | But Cameron’s challenge clearly goes much further even than these issues, big though they are. His real and deeper problem, the one at the root of all of the above, is one that has haunted his decade as party leader and still haunts it today – his continuing failure to define the modern Conservative party’s broad purposes adequately in ways that both unite his party and command wider confidence. That absence, which is so apparent over Europe, opened the way for the IDS of March. |
| Cameron’s underlying political instinct is a very traditional Tory one. He simply thinks that on the whole the country is best governed by the Conservatives. That might have been enough in the patrician era of Stanley Baldwin or Harold Macmillan. But not now. | Cameron’s underlying political instinct is a very traditional Tory one. He simply thinks that on the whole the country is best governed by the Conservatives. That might have been enough in the patrician era of Stanley Baldwin or Harold Macmillan. But not now. |
| Margaret Thatcher gave the Tories an ideological project. Parts of the post-Thatcher Tory party are in awe of it still. Since 1990, the party has never managed to get a modern balance between economic efficiency and social justice right, made far harder by the fetishisation of arbitrary deficit reduction targets since 2010. | Margaret Thatcher gave the Tories an ideological project. Parts of the post-Thatcher Tory party are in awe of it still. Since 1990, the party has never managed to get a modern balance between economic efficiency and social justice right, made far harder by the fetishisation of arbitrary deficit reduction targets since 2010. |
| The result, made much more acute once the Liberal Democrats were thrown out of government, is the disjunction we have seen so starkly in the past week – “leftwing” Tories such as George Osborne promoting regressive social policies, while “rightwing” Tories like IDS promote progressive ones. Until the Tories can find a more unified way of facing the realities of a mixed economy in an interdependent world where generational interests are in conflict, the problem that Cameron has never managed to solve will remain unsolved. | The result, made much more acute once the Liberal Democrats were thrown out of government, is the disjunction we have seen so starkly in the past week – “leftwing” Tories such as George Osborne promoting regressive social policies, while “rightwing” Tories like IDS promote progressive ones. Until the Tories can find a more unified way of facing the realities of a mixed economy in an interdependent world where generational interests are in conflict, the problem that Cameron has never managed to solve will remain unsolved. |