The debate over the Beecroft report is now the politics of the viscera. For Tory MPs it has become symbolic of how the Liberal Democrats — and Vince Cable, in particular — are holding them back from doing what they need to get the country out of this economic emergency. On the Liberal Democrat side it has become emblematic of everything about Steve Hilton — ‘Thatcher in a t-shirt’ as they dubbed him — that annoyed them.
Adrian Beecroft’s intervention today in the Telegraph and the Mail is bound to increase Tory tensions on the matter. He tells the Mail that Cameron and Osborne have ‘given
up’ on unfair dismissal. But it is this section from his Telegraph
interview that is the real rapier blow:
As the situation worsens in the Eurozone and the prospects of a full-blown recovery here recede, we are going to see many more Tory demands to call Clegg’s bluff. Tory MPs now, even the loyal ones, are muttering about what the Lib Dems are blocking and how the government reaction is insufficient to the situation the country finds itself in. They ask, what are the Lib Dems going to do if the Prime Minister simply pushes ahead with deregulation, walk out when they’re polling behind UKIP? Cameron is going to need to find a way to release some of this pressure if his relations with his own party are not going to become even tenser.‘“I’m constantly struck by how un-robust the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are when it comes to pushing back,” he says. “Nick Clegg [is] always threatening to go nuclear and dissolve the whole thing if he doesn’t get his way with this, that and the other. Which you’d think actually must be a hollow threat. “Therefore, why can’t the Government be more robust? I don’t know what the answer is.”’
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