The trouble with Grieve: Cameron may regret leaving the law to a lawyer

James Forsyth reviews the week in Politics

After a good meal, Tory MPs like to play a game: guess the first resignation from David Cameron’s Cabinet. For a party that loves plots and intrigue, this goes some way to making up for the fact that everyone will be on their best behaviour between now and the election. When it comes to who might walk on a point of principle, one name comes up more frequently than any other: Dominic Grieve, the shadow justice secretary.

This is, perhaps, appropriate given that Grieve was thrust into the limelight by David Davis’s self-immolation over 42 days. Straight after Davis resigned as shadow home secretary, Cameron and Osborne desperately wanted to prevent the possibility of a split over the issue and so having a friend of Davis who shared his trenchant opposition to 42 days fill the gap seemed sensible, especially as Grieve is a strong Commons performer who is popular with his colleagues.

But it was a case of act in haste, repent at leisure. Within days senior figures in the party were saying that they couldn’t envisage going into the election with Grieve as shadow home secretary: not surprising given that even before his elevation key members of the Cameron team were unconvinced by him. When a presentation on how to win more ethnic minority votes for the party included the line ‘We need more MPs like Dominic Grieve’, Steve Hilton, the keeper of the Cameron brand, could barely suppress a laugh.

Certainly, Grieve was not a typical shadow home secretary. He is a cerebral QC who speaks fluent French and he had little time for the tub-thumping approach to the job so beloved of some politicians. This caused problems. At one lunch with the then editor of the Sun Rebekah Wade, Grieve criticised the way that the paper covered crime.