Cameron is quite conservative enough, thank you

Find me a person who stopped voting Conservative last week because of David Cameron’s vague, half-arsed, lacklustre stance on gay marriage. Go on. I dare you. Or because of the even vaguer, totally-not-going-to-happen proposals to reform the House of Lords. I’ll settle for one of them instead. Just one, and then I’ll shut up and leave you alone. Anyone? Anyone?

Oh, look, there’s probably one. Maybe there are even as many as eight. And I don’t really want to meet them. They’re representative of nothing. ‘But the Ukip vote soared!’ I hear you cry. ‘Their share of the vote is five points higher than a year ago!’ Yes, indeed. But my hunch — liberal, urban, deluded moron that I doubtless am — would be that people voted for the party defined by its hostility to the European Union because they are hostile to the European Union. No?

Sure, Ukip is against gay marriage, but only in the way that they’re against basically everything. But they’re actively in favour of House of Lords reform (a by-product of being actively against House of Lords not reform). Why, then, is there this emerging belief that the Tory hierarchy’s great problem is that they’re always harping on about such things? Especially when they aren’t, even. Actually, it’s more that the Tory rightwing fringes are always harping on about them harping on. Enough harping, already. It’s nuts.

What planet are you on, when you think that David Cameron’s big problem is that he isn’t enough of a traditional Conservative? Whom do you speak to? Are you drunk? For most of the country, it’s a constant surprise not to see him with a shotgun under his arm. Ask a classroom of toddlers to paint a Conservative and they’ll paint David Cameron, in a top hat and a rosette, hurling a beagle at a fox.