Hilton will probably ride it out

Perry

the Tories are not incapable of blowing the next election

Come now Sir!

Given that they barely managed to scrape a ‘victory’ at the last GE, - against the asinine McBruin, - what chance have they against a revivified NooLieBOre?

Santorum

No serious person cycles in gear like that. His balls will be mince.

TGF UKIP

Wow! So Fraser Nelson finally screws up his courage and brings himself to actually write about Dave's Director of Strategy for a Labour Victory. Predictably, though, such mention can only be in the the most fulsome terms and his conclusion that my mate is going nowhere is quite correct even if the reasoning is quite wrong.

Steve H's Phase One was to ensure that, against all the odds, Dozey Dave blew winning in May 2010 by manipulating him into all his electoral idiocies - matching labour spend and borrow, "don't talk about immigration, do talk about chocolate oranges", tie the Tories to the issue everyone has at the top of their own agenda - "climate change", and instead of homing in on Labour's massive economic incompetence be evangelical on that hot button voter issue, The Big Society.

However, The Mole now has a much bigger target which will ensure that for the duration he sticks to Dave like a rash, to ensure that Dave stays on his current path and hands Labour a massive majority whenever the next election comes.

The thing is, though, that according to Guido, Steve H really is an aggressively nasty bastard so poor Fraser Nelson will still continue to be terrified in writing anything remotely objective about him.

Jackal

Interesting article but a bit cylical - excuse the pun

REPay

The Coalition's PR has been ghastly and worst of all they spin and use the media rather than parliament to make major announcements. The style is as though Campbell never went away without his surefootedness in managing the media. Hilton is not a loss...it is about time politicians stopped confusing strategy with PR.

Dennis Churchill

This rather eccentric Hungarian gentleman says it all about Cameron’s Cino (Conservatives in name only) party.
In bare feet to meet the US President, a certain air of professionalism about his appearance...no wonder he was hired.

Nicholas

The all-knowing Thucydides (per Hitchens: "this person, whose pseudonym, and style, are saturated with self-regard and accompanied by a lofty manner") thinks Cameron & Co keep an eye on the commenting Coffee House loons in order to stay on the right track - or on the left track really. Of course that was just another of Thucydides' usual sneers at those people he disagrees with.

It makes him feel awfully superior to consider that those whose political views are distasteful to him are a sort of inferior species.

Of course, when Cameron & Co lose the next election and the country is treated to another dose of the authoritarian left the loons will have the last laugh.

FvH

Hiltons biggest problem is Cameron's lack of political experience. He thinks his ultra confident public schoolboy persona can sort out any sticky problems, but in reality it doesn't work like that.
All the u turns, all the frustrations have been caused by Cameron's failure to get a grip and think through the politics rather than the personalities
We all waited years for this and it's all been lost in 12 months
What a wasted opportunity
All we've got left are Gove the giggling schoolgirl ( and his academies bribery scam) and IDS with his rapidly disappearing welfare
cap!!
Hiltons wasting his time

Austin Barry

Christ, nobody outside the gentlemens' mutual masturbation 'cottage' at Westminster gives a toss about this incestuous bullshit.

disenfranchised

i'm incredulous as to why anyone would want to vote for any of the three wrecker parties.
by the time of the next election we'll have seen momentous events take place in brussels, and voting UKIP will then have become a serious proposition, even a necessity, for many more thinking people.....

Rhoda Klapp

Doesn't he owe it to his constituents to stay on, and not risk a by-election? What's that, he's not elected at all? Really? Then who gives a rat's? If the future of the government and the country depends on a cycling twat who can't even dress himself, this is a poor do.

The other explanation is that this is excitable kremlinology. Perish the thought.

HampsteadOwl

Steve Hilton’s hurry has, I suspect, less to do with a noble rage at the laziness of progress and more with an impatient desire to leave his scruffy imprint on the establishment, before releasing himself back as soon as possible into the louche world of advertising, where he can earn sacks of money for being gnomic. However, if he is genuinely interested in giving good advice to the prime minister then he ought to slow down - "pause" I believe is the fashionable term - and learn from some of the eternal verities of British politics.

Reforming the public services is very, very difficult. Mrs Thatcher, if we are honest, never really achieved a lot in this direction and Tony Blair, though he had ambitions to do so, was held back by Gordon Brown and a misguided belief in the potency of surrounding himself by men with Powerpoint presentations. There are all sorts of obstacles. The i-dotting of officials; the self-serving arguments of lawyers; the nihilism of the Treasury. Above all, there is the massive, cretinous, opposition of the producer interest, whose influence is amplified by a peculiar English deference towards “experts” and, in the case of the NHS, a bonkers belief that the BMA and the Royal College of Nursing are anything other than militant trade unions.

The Book of Blair tells us that he (or He rather) regrets not moving faster in his first term on reforming the public services. So the Cameroons, we are told, want to avoid the same mistake. This ignores one tiny detail that Blair had a majority in Parliament of 179, while the Tories don’t have any majority at all.

The only thing that keeps the coalition partners together, other than a shared liking for the trappings of power, is that they have come to more or less the same conclusion about the need to fix the economy. There is - as the NHS debacle showed - absolutely no common cause on reforming the public sector. For the Conservatives to look to the Liberal Democrats to support them in taking on the producer interests is as eccentric a choice as relying on a woollen walking-stick.

No matter how much the prime minister’s advisers - those loyal and trustworthy fellows who open up so readily to James Forsyth about the boss’ shortcomings - rail against “complacency”, they are not going to change this equation. Understanding your weaknesses if the first step to charting a course away from them. “Leave it to the second-term” might therefore be less an expression of inertia than a respectful bow in the direction of politics which is, after all, the art of the possible.

The stupidity of the health catastrophe was that Andrew Lansley, if he had been less eager to make a name for himself, could have achieved much of what he wanted to do underneath the political radar. Still, the Conservative Party has to get over this, focus single-mindedly on sorting out the economy and on holding out to 2015, when an election can be fought and won off the back of returning prosperity and re-drawn constituencies more favourable to the Tory interest (and fairer and all that).

Then, perhaps, with a decent majority and the Liberals back where they are happiest, in opposition, the Conservatives can get on and do to the NHS and the other public sector industries what really needs to be done.

Hexhamgeezer

I see Hilton's wearing a 'Big Society' t-shirt.

Does he think it'll render him invisible?