Wednesday 5th September

I am writing this (as usual) the day before you read it.  That is on Tuesday morning, and so the news hasn’t broken yet, though I suspect it will be the dampest of squibs imaginable.  Poor David Cameron, he has all the trappings of power with none of the actuality, none of the freedom to choose his destiny, because he is shackled at both legs to opposing forces.  On the one side is Clegg, with whom he has tied a matrimonial knot which was expedient, but is now looking as tarnished as the brass rings they celebrated with.  Cameron needs the Lib-Dems, because without them he can get no legislation through Parliament, and even now he is not going to have his Constituency Bill which would have given him maybe twenty more seats with no extra votes.   And he will still cling to Clegg, even though Clegg is indeed in trouble with his own party, who are seeing that being in (shared) power is not quite what they thought it might be, as they are blamed for all the unpopular policies they put their name to, and never thanked for the few they have achieved.

On the other side he is shackled to Osborne and the programme they so foolishly rushed into of cutting (or trying to) the deficit so fast, which was always driven by ideology and a pathological hatred of the public sector and all its values.  To abandon Osborne now would indeed be the end for Cameron too.  So I can safely (I hope) predict that it will be all change, but really no change at all as Cameron shifts the deckchairs on the poop deck of the Titanic as it sails proudly on into iceberg strewn waters.