David Cameron and the triumph of fence-sitting politicians

David Cameron is the king of the wishy-washy compromise. Cameron has never looked happier than when he appeared in the Downing Street Rose Garden in 2010 with Nick Clegg. There was something about being in that awkward Conservative-Lib Dem coalition that suited Dave. It was, of course, another attempt at compromising – by striking a desperate last-ditch deal with the EU that no one wanted – that sealed Cameron’s fate. Now, he’s back – but he isn’t the only politician who has made a career out of sitting on the fence.

Rishi Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle shows that the current Tory Prime Minister also likes to try and please everyone, only to please no one. Sunak’s resurrection of Cameron delighted wet Tories – but to avoid alienating his Red Wall MPs, he then appointed Esther McVey, a minister without portfolio, tasked with combating ‘wokery’. In his Tory conference speech, he said people were fed up of the political status quo – only to revive Dave a few weeks later. Who is this mixed message supposed to please?

When it comes to ‘stopping the boats’, Sunak’s language has been uncompromising. But voters know the most likely outcome will be a fudge where the numbers come down but don’t fall to zero – particularly when newly-minted Home Secretary James Cleverly seems squeamish about leaving the European Convention of Human Rights. Instead, Cleverly appears to think that he and Rishi can politely reason their way around something obviously antithetical to their goal of stopping the boats.

Labour is just as bad. Keir Starmer attempted to head off a rebellion last week by mooting a compromise motion for ‘humanitarian pauses’ in Gaza, a solution that suited neither side. But if the party’s position on Israel is muddled, it’s far worse on gender.

‘Far less heat and far more light’ was the phrase used last week by Labour MP Lisa Nandy when she decided to chip in again on the trans debate last week. Her sad-faced, more-in-sorrow-than-anger intervention was typical. But most people don’t want a compromise on this issue. They know that the rights of women – and confused teenagers who might be considering changing sex – are important and must be protected. So, no, sorry Nandy: there’s already enough light in the trans debate.

For too long, the discussion around this issue has been confused by well-connected gender activists lobbying politicians. The impact they have had is made clear by the refusal of otherwise perfectly sensible politicians to tell us what a woman is. The influence of these activists has shown how terrible ideas get into the mainstream. By presenting each incremental baby step as reasonable in itself, as just a tiny harmless compromise, you eventually find yourself in a situation where a male rapist ends up in a women’s prison.

If Nandy is right that we need to keep talking to thrash out an agreement, one wonders how this supposedly sensible, mature trading off is meant to pan out. Are women supposed to admit a certain number of men into their loos – say 30 blokes on alternate Thursdays between the hours of 2 to 4.30 pm? And when it comes to other politicians who are demanding a compromise on Israel-Gaza, are they really asking Israelis to sit around a table with Hamas, an organisation that wants to kill Jews?

The truth is that compromise works by the unreasonable party eroding their opponents’ reserves of fortitude. We can see this in how accustomed we already are to the hate marches every week in Britain’s cities. Are they going to be another British weekend tradition now? Is this to be a new weekly fixture for middle class faux-leftists, a sort of Hamastonbury? Are we to add mass displays of ethnic hatred to the car boot sale, the five-a-side football match, and the Sunday stroll? Such compromise is how we end up tolerating intolerable things.

Calls to prohibit the pro-Palestine marches have run into the reasonable principle of free speech. But let’s be honest, nobody is a free speech absolutist. It’s always a matter of where you draw the line. Call me old fashioned, but for me that line gets crossed when Jewish people are left terrified by the sight of a huge mob assembling.

The Metropolitan Police, along with most politicians, would rather none of this was happening. And so they play it down and pretend it’s not as bad as all that. I think it quite likely that several of the MPs who voted for the ‘ceasefire’ last week did so because, like the police, they are – not unreasonably – in fear for their lives if they say ‘No’. But nobody dares say that out loud.

There is an unspoken assumption that negotiation is the only way out of contested issues. But is that really always the case? Not everything can be tamped down with everybody getting a little bit of what they wanted. Don’t some bad ideas just need to be faced down, and defeated?

Yet still, the compromise and the avoidance among politicians goes on. Rishi Sunak is tweeting quirky graphics about potholes; education secretary Gillian Keegan is celebrating ‘Odd Socks Day’ in the same week hundreds of kids play truant for a ‘peace’ march. There is a refusal to properly acknowledge what has been revealed about Britain in the last few weeks. And so it will carry on, until something terrible happens. Something too terrible even for fence-sitting politicians to ignore.