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Cameron's crafty plan - and why it may work

David Cameron says he plans to fight the next general election and serve a full, five-year-term.

Since we now we have fixed-term Parliaments, this means — if he wins — he would still be Prime Minister in 2020, the year of his 54th birthday.

Coincidentally, the politician he models himself on, Tony Blair, was also PM for ten years, before retiring at 54.

Leader: Cameron's approach is to emphasise that he has a job to do, not that he wants to reign for ever

But Cameron will never be the equal of Blair, who led Labour to an overall majority in three Parliaments. So far, Cameron has led a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition in one.

It is unlikely that any premier will exceed Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years in office over three Parliaments, which ended in 1990 when she was forced out at the age of 65 by her own side. Blair might have surpassed her record if he hadn’t been bundled into multi-millionaire retirement in 2007 by Gordon Brown.

For his part, Cameron’s approach is to emphasise that he has a job to do, not that he wants to reign for ever. He reminds us of Labour’s failures — ‘Do you want to hand the keys back to the people who crashed the car?’ — and says: ‘My job is to steer the ship in the right direction.’

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If he managed to bring down the deficit, turn round the economy, create new jobs and businesses and keep key promises on welfare reform, immigration and Europe, he said, he’d be ‘well on our way and on the right track’.

After two-and-a-half years in power, shouldn’t the Coalition already be ‘well on our way and on the right track’?

Yesterday, Cameron said his views were all set out in ‘a very good interview’ he did for a Sunday paper. ‘Very good’ from his point of view, he meant. He was able to make long, uninterrupted boasts.

And the love-in ended on an optimistic note by the interviewer saying: ‘This is a prime minister thinking beyond the limitations of his partnership with Clegg — way beyond, in fact.

Rival: Boris Johnson is mayor until 2016, but could combine the job with becoming a Tory MP, making himself available in a post-2015 party leadership election

‘Let others dwell on the succession. As far as Cameron is concerned, he has only just begun.’

A rosy view that is not shared by many Tory MPs.

They don’t think Cameron is steering the ship in the right direction. Some of them think he’s not steering it at all.

What they fear is that he is locking them into permanent coalition with the Liberal Democrats. They’ll parse his future speeches looking for signs of this.

Some think The Fixed Parliaments Act of 2011 — a Cameron/Clegg wheeze designed to ensure their coalition had a decent, five-year chance of success — has changed the character of our politics.

Certainly it has made Cameron more secure in office, albeit with Clegg as the rear end of his political pantomime horse. It’s practically impossible for Cameron to be driven out of office prematurely unless the Liberal Democrats walk out on him.

Tory MPs fear this has made another coalition with the Lib Dems likely in 2015.

Having weakened their brand by compromising with the Lib Dems, will the Conservatives ever win an overall majority again?

Also, can Cameron take them into another coalition with the Lib Dems if he fails to get an overall majority in 2015?

Some say there would be resistance in the Tory party, if not to the coalition per se, but to Cameron being its leader. He has rivals —  London Mayor Boris Johnson, Education Secretary Michael Gove, Home Secretary Theresa May. All are serious players.

Johnson is mayor until 2016, but could combine the job with becoming a Tory MP, making himself available in a post-2015 party leadership election. And although neither Gove nor Mrs May seems likely to resign their Cabinet jobs early in order to challenge Cameron, everything could change. To his credit, Cameron is a positive, confident leader. He polls well ahead of his party with the public (unlike Opposition leader Ed Miliband, who polls well behind of Labour.)

Under pressure — like fighting for his political life — he’d be a formidable opponent.

So if the present political pessimism is lifted, and we begin to feel better off again, there’s every chance that Cameron can win an overall majority.

And if he doesn’t, would his party really object to another five-year deal with the Lib Dems if the alternative was a return to the 1997-2010 wilderness whence they came?

  He's making a meal of it Relaxed: Wildlife film-maker Gordon Buchanan is pictured cowering inside a reinforced plastic cage as a polar bear tried to get him

Wildlife film-maker Gordon Buchanan is pictured cowering inside a reinforced plastic cage as a polar bear tried to get him.

‘Without a doubt she wanted me for lunch,’ he says. ‘She was so persistent, looking for a weak spot for almost 45 minutes.’ The pictures enabled Buchanan to promote The Polar Bear Family & Me, starting on BBC2 tonight.

I wonder what he thinks they prove.

We know hungry polar bears will kill us if they can. What if the bear had got hold of Buchanan? Would his team have filmed him being eaten — or, would the bear, whom they called Lyra, have been shot along with her two young cubs? Despite what he says, Buchanan looks pretty relaxed in the photos of him under siege.

As I compete with colleagues in avoiding alcohol and food — the usual, boring January ritual — I am reading a biography of the great American wordsmith and eater, A.J. Liebling.

He said of Marcel Proust, author of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu: ‘The man ate a tea biscuit, the taste evoked memories, he wrote a book.’

Would he have written a masterpiece if he’d had a better appetite, wondered Liebling? His own idea of a decent dinner included ‘a bowl of clam chowder, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a thin swordfish steak, a pair of lobsters and a Long Island duck’.

How did he compare with Proust? Liebling said of himself: ‘Nobody better could write faster, and nobody faster wrote better.’

  Labour's scheme to tax the pension contributions of the rich, purportedly to find jobs for the long-term unemployed, is a cynical device to promote class hatred. Whatever may be said about the Coalition government's shortcomings, I think it has sought generally to govern on behalf of everyone. Yes, it might have been a bit tougher on spiv bankers, but it is still taxing the rich much more than Labour did during its 13 years in power.

  News of the epidemic of ‘smartphone muggings’ from children — 10,000 stolen in the UK every month — left me with mixed feelings.

Indignation about the crime, naturally. But incredulity that kids as young as six have been victims.

(Hertfordshire police revealed a victim aged three, but he’d  only been robbed of a  non-smartphone given to him as a toy.)

Perhaps the child of the future will have wheels instead of legs — and two extra hands, of course.

  Having failed to become one of the new Crime Commissioners, former Labour deputy leader John Prescott is  now writing a column for a Sunday red-top newspaper.

It’s billed ‘He still packs a punch’ — harking back to the moment in 2001 when he punched a protester who threw an egg at him.

Surely it’s rather desperate to sell the old boy’s ruminations on this tacky basis.

  Ambitious: Birgitte Hjort Sorensen (pictured) plays reporter Katrine in the Danish political drama Borgen

The Danish political drama Borgen has returned to BBC4, a welcome reminder that TV doesn’t have to be dimwitted reality shows and foul-mouthed comedians trying to be funny — the worst crime you could be accused of when I was young.

Borgen’s prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg Christensen, has to head off a revolt in her coalition government over whether to bring troops home from Afghanistan. There was an unexpected twist involving a dead soldier, his letter to his grief-stricken father and the pretty, ambitious reporter, Katrine, played by Birgitte Hjort Sorensen, who brings it to light.

A dramatic, topical story well told by tiny (pop 5.5 million) Denmark’s state broadcaster.

Made you wonder why the BBC hasn’t made anything comparable about our own Afghanistan suffering. As Ms Sorensen says of our broadcasting establishment: ‘It is like our big brother is looking up to us now.’

A losing game...

Why are high-speed, high-stakes gaming machines — called ‘the crack cocaine of gambling’ — overwhelmingly located in betting shops  in Labour-held constituencies, raking in £5 billion  a year?

‘Companies are targeting the poor and the Government is letting them,’  says Labour MP Lucy  Powell, angry that £190 million was gambled in her Manchester Central constituency last year. 

Tory MP John Redwood explains it differently,  saying: ‘Poor people put getting rich down to luck and think  they can take a gamble.’

The Association Of British Bookmakers denies targeting  the poor, saying: ‘Like any other retailer, we locate our shops where footfall is high and rents are affordable.’

Redwood is closer to the truth, but I disagree that the poor generally ‘put getting rich down to luck’.

Most know it involves talent, know-how and skills they do not possess, or didn’t have an opportunity to acquire.

Surely we gamble to cheer ourselves up.

 

Stargazing Live is back, with Professor Brian Cox and TV comic Dara O Briain scouring the heavens. I have two questions. Has Dr Cox had to promise the BBC he won’t communicate with aliens if he encounters them (as he claimed he’d had to do last year)? And is  unsettling O Briain an alien already inside the BBC tent?

 

Barack Obama hasn’t had his second inaugaration yet (it’s on January 20), but the 2016 presidential election campaign is already under way.

Doubts about Hillary Clinton’s health mean the Democrat field is clear for loquacious Vice-President Joe Biden, who seems  (for now) to have lived down his reputation  as ‘America’s Neil Kinnock’ and is  being written up as a runner.

Absurd but true.




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