We certainly didn’t learn much new about David Cameron from his flooding press conference this afternoon. We already knew that his approach to crises is to let things get rather bad for a little while, and then, with his back against the wall, to perform well as a statesman taking control of a messy situation. He did that again today, with a clear line that ‘money is no object’ as a means of countering the Ukip line on diverting some of the aid budget to flood victims. Cameron set out specific examples of the extra spending on flood relief, a bigger role for the military – with 1,600 service men and women deployed by the end of today and thousands more on call – and engaged with that demand on the aid budget (he was less engaging on whether he will start holding these press conferences again regularly though, which is odd, as today was a demonstration of how Prime Ministerial he can look and how good he is at taking questions from the press).
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