Cameron fells the forestry consultation

Despite his easy charm, David Cameron is unsentimental. His dismemberment of Caroline Spelman’s sagging forestry policy at yesterday’s PMQs was as ruthless as it was abrupt. The Prime Minister cannot be an enemy of Judy Dench and other doughty dames, so the hapless environment minister had to be shafted. Cameron’s strategic withdrawal did not end there. Several newspapers report that the 12-week consultation will be curtailed by the end of the week, on the simple grounds that the public does not like it. Spelman is expected to pronounce the project dead in the Commons at lunchtime today, and the chamber will ring with the noise of Labour’s braying benches.

Ed Miliband is already dancing a jig across the media, claiming credit for a u-turn with which he had nothing to do. But Miliband’s charge of ‘government incompetence’ is not without merit. The forestry consultation document offered sensible conclusions to the commercial and environmental problems that have long beset the Forestry Commission.