Who lives in a head like this?

Why the siege upon Camerlot is self-inflicted

One way and another, Prime Minister David Cameron is embattled at the moment. But having felt just over a year ago that his Coalition – and it is his Coalition – deserved everyone’s understanding, I now have no sympathy for the bloke.

Even though, throughout April 2010, The Slog railed at the Conservatives to be more single-minded in their electoral appeal to what was left of British commonsense, I still felt sympathy for Cameron once the Coalition was formed. The herculean efforts of him and his closest negotiators William Hague and Oliver Letwin to do the LibDem deal not only commanded respect: whether they wish to admit it now or not, a huge rainbow of electors breathed a sigh of relief when Gordon Brown and his appalling Addams Family of cynical fixers were finally left out in the cold.

But even then, it was perfectly obvious why the Coalition was necessary in the first place: Nick Clegg polled above his weight (because he looked like something cleaner and fresher than the other two) and Cameron’s election strategy of ‘softly-softly-catchee-voter’ disillusioned hundreds of thousands who were looking for honesty and leadership. The Slog saw through Clegg early – I never met anyone who didn’t, but then all my friends are grown-ups – but it was Dave’s ‘don’t make trouble’ mantra that lost an election which was his to win.

It is that same unwillingness to stand and fight that has reduced his Administration to anarchic muddle.

The Prime Minister’s current bed of brambles is the NHS. Like the Blair clone he is, once more Cameron is all pledge lists and back-me-or-sack-me – an easy solution in a culture where pledges are quickly forgotten, and the electorate has no power to sack him anyway.

The problem with the NHS ‘reforms’ as originally presented is that they were based on bigoted polemics, and sold by an arrogant twit. The human form of Andrew Lansley housed just the right melange of ignorance and bombast to wind up framing the ideas – and from day one this column predicted their inevitable demise. But Cameron lacked the insight to see this in either the ideas or the man, because he has no criteria by which to make a judgment. Put another way, he has no goals, no firm red lines of strategy, and no new ideas: he is an empty vessel, ruler of the mythical kingdom of Camerlot – and thus doomed to become the vassal of events.

When it comes to the NHS, Dave hasn’t interrogated the most important principle: how it is funded. He has simply taken a sum as read, and fiddled around with it in a sort of informally deranged manner. The same is true of education.

The higher education controversy rumbles on. Why? Because Cameron lacked the vision or balls to say, “No more dingbats going to read Media Studies at Aston”. Now he is embroiled (quite rightly in my view) in a debate based on Government dissembling about University tuition costs. Of course, under this plan, the better off will go to University – as opposed to the best qualified – because the the quintessential element of merit has been surgically removed…..and thus the social mobility afforded by the 1944 Butler Act has been further eroded.

But don’t ask David Cameron to understand social mobility: he started at the top of the heap, and so has absolutely no understanding of its importance.

The only thing Dave was cunning enough to grasp was his lack of connection with that 97% of society which remains a mystery to him. So it was that, when shown Andy Coulson, he saw a Tabloid Man who could make that connection for him. What he didn’t see (and didn’t listen to) was the pretty obvious evidence that Coulson was the sort of disgusting ethics-free cynic likely to appeal to his master, Rupert Murdoch.

This unwillingness to use the long spoon required for all supping with the Devil now finds the Prime Minister in ever-deeper waters. As his ‘culture’ secretary Jeremy Hunt aims pop-eyed grins at those suggesting a corporate law-breaker should not hold the reins of UK televisual media, the Judiciary in the shape of Justice Vos is declaring full speed ahead on those civil cases most likely to prove just what a malign cancer Newscorp is in any decent culture. But having sold his soul to the Devil, Theophilus must take the consequences. As The Slog has long predicted, they will be dire.

In foreign policy, Dave remains the chamelion adapting to his audience: ‘Today’s Monday, must be Obama – Special Relationship. Now I’m in Ankara, must be Turkey – Islam is Nice.’ But too much hat-tipping to confused Obaman ideas and unpleasant Islamist realities has yet again landed the PM in the mire. Israel wonders if we are any longer her ally. We must hope somebody is telling the Government in Tel Aviv we are, for they are the only positive, planet-enhancing culture in the Middle East. Fine, the Israelis go off the deep-end at times. My answer to those who pontificate sanctimoniously about this ad nauseam  is always “Look at a map of the Middle East. Look at the malign forces surrounding Israel. Look how far the Arabs have gone backwards while Israelis have created  a homeland out of a dustbowl. Look at the history of persecution of the Jews. Then wake up.”

But such is an unpopular view among the elite calling the shots and making all the wrong calls in Britain today. And there is no way that a born toady like David Cameron is ever going to consider taking that Establishment on: he is, after all, an enthusiastic member of it.

Last but by far most significant, the Coalition’s leader thought he had scored an early win for pragmatism in the way he appeared to neatly trip his way through the spending-cuts minefield. Osborne was rightly annoyed by this, for the dilution of some cuts and deferment of others was always going to make a near-impossible task for the UK completely unachievable. So it is proving: IMF approval or not, the Government’s economic strategy is running on empty: because the cuts started too late, and weren’t preceded by reconfiguring an economy hopelessly dependent on fluttering banker-confetti.

It isn’t David Cameron’s fault that Gordon Brown is an idiot. But is very much his fault that he didn’t discern the nature of the idiocy, and get to work on it from Day One. With Gordo it was spend, spend, spend. In Camerlot, it is cut, cut, cut. But a failure to face out the banks means that there is no money to make, make, make.

The simple truth is this: our Prime Minister is a man miles behind the lines, telling those he commands to run from the sound of gunfire…..because he has no moral diktat explaining to him why they must hold their ground. And when asked by his men, “What are we fighting for?” he can only answer, “Why – to stay where we are of course”.

That is the morality of perpetual retreat. But it is the only option open to those with no principled ambition.