We are looking at a government and a Prime Minister showing all the signs of terminal decline – and I should know because the signs which are there for all to see were evident at the end of the last Labour Government. The key difference is that we had been in power for 13 years and been faced with the deepest recession in living memory, whereas David Cameron has barely been in control for two and half years.
This Prime Minister's weakness is showing – he has presided over U-turns in so many key areas on "granny tax", "pasty tax", "bedroom tax" – and now it appears he is under pressure over alcohol pricing. He is losing his bottle and being attacked from all sides within the coalition and inside his own party.
It is his management skills which are so suspect. He may be good at PR, and that is one of the reasons why his ratings have stayed reasonably high for so long, but he is not good at running the government.
There have been far too many errors over too short a period. He was warned he was moving too fast and virtually every piece of legislation or major announcement has been seriously flawed in one way or another. The so-called "bedroom tax" has been the latest debacle and the concerns it has raised were flagged up well in advance. It is one the most ill-thought through proposals yet, and, although we need welfare reform, we don't need reforms which allow foster families and service personnel families to be hit while allowing people on remand to be exempted. This has now changed, but the rules are still flawed in that they could allow couples to say they have separated and that would take them outside of the change. This cannot be the Government's intention.
Also, the change in the payment of housing benefits – allowing money to be paid direct to the tenant, which I flagged up during the course of the Localism Bill as being a dangerous route to go down – is, now the government has piloted the plan, leading to serious rent arrears. This will be very bad news for social housing providers, who have concerns about their financial base and the way in which they will be seen as a greater risk by lenders. These ill-thought through changes could lead to fewer social housing units being built rather than the increase we so desperately need.
Then there are cabinet ministers briefing directly and indirectly to the Press, making announcements (in the case of one department) not cleared by Number 10. There is no guiding hand from the man at the top and it would seem a growing lack of respect from his own backbenchers. If he is to survive, he has to get a handle on this. The Prime Minister is also facing an Opposition which is not doing what losing parties historically have done, which is fall apart and squabble among themselves. He is facing a united Labour Party, carefully working through policy development in preparation for the next General Election.
