All in all, a pretty good day for the government

I doubt David Cameron will have many better days in government than this. Considering the government cancelled a hospital project yesterday, today has passed as one long photo-op, free of incident. It began with Theresa May banning a radical Islamist cleric, Zakir Naik, displaying a resolve that eluded her immediate predecessors. The papers were full of Cameron’s ‘coup’ in Brussels yesterday; the only major news story that might have unnerved Cameron was the FT’s research into Tory immigration policy, which the FT calculates will hit growth and raise taxes. It was too esoteric to hit the TV screens, so too the cuts in arts funding. It must have been a happy breakfast in No 10 this morning.  

Then there was the grand excitement of Michael Gove’s school reforms, which have encountered surprisingly little opposition so far. Theresa May was back being nice homosexuals et al, which goes down well. There was also news that mortgage lending grew in May, which, though it adds to George Osborne’s political difficulty over convincing of the need to cut, is positive news. At the end of the day, Francis Maude added to the steady creep of evidence on government waste, with the revelation that the taxpayer has been spending an average of £600,000 per private consultant. And as a backdrop to the steady flow of positives, Cameron shared the world stage with Sarkozy and, more importantly, Carla Bruni - though he was studious not to gape and ruin the effect. By contrast, Labour has been grounded by the reality of opposition.