Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Reasons for real hope amid the misplaced optimism

Today’s civil partnership between two men who look uncannily like each other will, I suspect, be remembered as a festival of misplaced optimism. Cameron overdid it a little, making out that this was his ideal outcome. It seems rude to point it out, but there were two podiums in that rose garden because he flunked the election (see Tim Montgomerie’s superlative report for details). The cost of his failure to win is having to do a deal with Nick Clegg. The country didn’t vote for a new politics: the Lib Dems did worse than last time, so polls show most voters would have preferred Cameron to have formed a minority government. This is an alliance designed to stop Cameron fighting an election again soon, and repeating last week’s jarring experience. So let’s not pretend this is the liberation of Paris, dawn of a new era, etc.

That said, today can be said to be a victory for Conservatism because the two best policies – welfare reform and education – will be implemented by the most competent people. Grayling’s return to the DWP brief is great news: he is not a vain man, he is – like IDS – genuinely enthused about the transformative power of welfare reform. It was Grayling who seized on the David Freud agenda to start the welfare reform bidding wars which James Purnell responded to so well. To have all three in the DWP is as close as you get to a dream team in politics.

I met IDS earlier, and we had a brief chat about what lies ahead. And I offer CoffeeHousers this analogy. When George Robertson was sent from Scotland to the MoD in 1997 it was a shock to him: he had not the first clue about defence.

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