A government relaunch of the sort we’ve endured this week is inevitably a fraught, fragile affair. The problem with such enterprises is that they have this unfortunate habit of drawing attention to the fact that it is, well, a relaunch. Downing Street may hope differently but a relaunch inevitably draws attention to the very failures the relaunch is supposed to put behind us. You wouldn’t be doing this if things were going well, would you Prime Minister?
Of course things are not going well. Nor will they get any better any time soon. Yesterday’s Essex reprise of the chummy Downing Street coalition presser was a mistake. A necessary or at least understandable one perhaps but a mistake nevertheless. That’s a river, as an old Greek said, in which you cannot bathe twice. Similarly, Mr Cameron’s attempt to suck-up to right-wing Tory voters via a weak-toast piece in the Daily Telegraph was a misjudgement.
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