For regular readers of my blog - yes hands up all two of you - you will remember that last year whilst suggesting that David Cameron would prove to be a lightweight prime minister, I noted his excellent savvy in managing the media and the party political machine.
Cameron's great achievement was "detoxifying the Tory brand" and removing the epithet "same old Tories". His aim was to prove to the public that the Tories could be trusted with public services and that the sky would not fall in. Central to all of this of course was the Tories achilles' heal the NHS, so much so that Cameron loudly exclaimed across numerous election billboards "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS".
My prediction at the beginning of the Coalition that treading a careful line of deficit reduction and welfare reform the Tories would win the next general election by around thirty seats. I suspected that the Thatcherite excesses of previous Tory governments would be shelved until a second or even third term of office. The Tories would slowly but surely build up trust and move only to change things once they were sure of picking a fight they could win. That is of course what Mrs T, the darling of Cameron, Osbourne and Gove, would have done.
Which makes the announcements of most radical reform of the NHS even more astounding. The savvy which Cameron had prior to the election seems to have well and truly deserted him. Despite the condescending diatribes from Conservative ministers on Question Time they seem not to grasp at all the central cause of the public's concern, that on the NHS voters simply don't trust them.
The proposed NHS reforms will cost the Coalition the next general election. The Tories are already seen as a party that has a fanatical agenda to privatise public services irrespective of public support to do so. The LibDems will not be forgiven for standing by and letting his happen either.
Even if, as is rumoured, Lansley is sacked and the reform stalled, the damage has already been done, the Tory brand has been retoxified. Quite why Cameron has let so much pre-election graft become undone so quickly is bizarre. Cameron gives the impression that losing the next election is a small price to pay for unleashing an irreversible Thatcherite storm upon the nation's public services.
Or as Ed Miliband wrote in the Independent yesterday:
"As for "red Toryism", "compassionate Conservatism", that funny tree logo, the huskies and "going green" – these were the cloaks they wore to confuse the voters. What we are witnessing now is the recontamination of the Tory party."
So I revise my view, I maintain still that Cameron is a lightweight Prime Minister but I now add that his abilities as political operator must be seriously in question too. Not since Gordon Brown's election that never was, has a PM done so much instant damage to his own credibility.
Cameron was said he was the "heir to Blair", how much he has to learn from the old master.
