Cameron will be our next PM, but maybe not for long

The popular will to eject Labour looks settled, but a Tory government voted in without enthusiasm will swiftly falter

- Polly Toynbee
- The Guardian, Saturday 13 February 2010
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How can they be so hopeless? So many open goals missed, so many own-goals scored, and yet overflowing with more donations than they know what to do with: Cameron and his party are proving breathtakingly incompetent at seizing an election handed to them on a platter.

Was ever there such a ripe plum ready to drop? A long-in-the-tooth government led by a singularly unpopular prime minister – especially with most of his cabinet – has suffered a mighty crash that exposes most of its economic assumptions as mistaken. A leader parading private grief on television suggests desperation and loss of dignity.

Drawing up its manifesto, any long-serving government is trapped between more of the same old, same old, or something new that begs the question: why didn't you do it before, then? The Iraq war is unforgiven. Labour will suffer most from MPs' grand larceny: 52% told Mori they would vote against any incumbent overcharging for expenses, and there are more Labour MPs. The good that Labour did is in danger of being buried with its bones by a press near unanimously rooting for a Conservative victory. If ever Time for a Change was a winning slogan, it must be now.

So why are the Tories sliding out of their secure majority hilltop? If the Cameron machine is this useless in opposition, what kind of government will it be? Cameron, who did well at scrubbing off the old graffiti of Tory nastiness, now resorts to unexpected nastiness himself. No more "Punch and Judy politics" this week turned into rat-like bad faith over reaching a consensus on social care for the old. Andrew Lansley too optimistically imagined that an all-party agreement on paying for social care bills could be forged in the heat of a general election firefight.

But this was grown-up politics, as the public say they want. For David Cameron not only to blow-torch it but to turn this tricky question into an election poster – "Don't pay Labour's death tax" – backfired badly. It was a cheap shot and dirty politics that left his own policy exposed to scrutiny: the Conservatives' voluntary charge of £8,000 to the retiring doesn't stop people's homes being sold if they need residential care, as it doesn't cover accommodation charges; it doesn't cover anyone already unfit at 65; and it leaves paying for care at home to local authorities – an incentive for councils to bundle people into residential homes sooner.

Bad politics too was Cameron's ill-natured, gloves-off attack on Gordon Brown this week: it did more damage to Cameron's character. Where has Mr Nice Guy gone? He grabs a passing crime to support householders attacking burglars, but it reminds people he's an ideological shape-shifter. Disgraceful was the backroom election dealing with unionists in Northern Ireland, dangerously suggesting a future Cameron government would be pro-unionist not honest broker.

One by one, core policies that should be fireproof turn highly flammable. Marriage tax relief costs a fortune and gives 13 times more to the rich than the poor: he can't say how else it can work. The head of Swedish Ofsted revealed on Newsnight that Swedish education standards have slid backwards with the new free schools the Tories use as their model. It has made schools socially segregated, leading to overall worse results as in our grammar school counties. This may be popular – but only with Cameron's core vote.

Meanwhile his "Broken Britain" was forensically eviscerated by the usually Tory-friendly Economist magazine in this week's cover story: it challenges Cameron for using the Edlington boys case as a sign of "what is going wrong in our society" when crime has fallen 45% since 1995. "Less crime, less killing, fewer teenage mums, far fewer fags, perhaps a bit less drink and drugs," the sober magazine concludes.

The real broken Britain revealed in two other reports on inequality this week exposes a weak flank for the Tories too, as the OECD finds Britain the most class-bound of developed nations with least social mobility. Poll after poll shows some 75% of voters say the gap between rich and poor is too wide: they may not like the word "redistribution", but as Professor John Hills points out, given specific options on taxes they choose the fairer and more progressive way every time. Cameron began well in catching that underlying disquiet, but now he retreats to old Tory nostrums.

Most puzzling is the Cameron/Osborne wobble and rewobble on the economy – to swinge or not to swinge? Concern at how Osborne would run the economy seeps out of City and business voices, despite a yearning for Tory victory. The only cuts spelled out – £1.5bn to happen at once – disintegrated on first inspection. Not to have a few asbestos policies by now is extraordinary.

Here's why: Tory heart and head pull in opposite directions. They do want austerity – but know the voters don't. The people may want a free lunch – but they also have a nose for snake-oil sellers promising it. Few voters follow these daily spats in Westminster, but when a party's core policies break like reeds in the wind, they sense incoherence and a hiding of real intent. Old Labour sweats from 1997 look on astonished: not a policy, not a penny of spending, not a word was spoken until road-tested to destruction first.

Cameron's coterie adopts that same obsessive control-freakery, and his party bristles at candidates more or less imposed, ministers' lunches with journalists logged and even tweets and blogs vetted. But what's the use if official policy comes apart? This year has gone badly: just how badly emerges in private Labour polling suggesting voters now rate Cameron less "in touch with ordinary people" than Brown – which takes some doing. Within the Tory camp some press on for austerity, others call back Cameron-Nice. The result? A nastier tone but with the claws concealed.

All the same, there is little doubt that Cameron will be the next prime minister. However, his certainty of an outright majority is slipping from his grasp. Obliging him to govern only by the consent of the Lib Dems would clip his party's more predatory wings, the ones hungrily circling to swoop on the big state. A Cameron government voted in without enthusiasm will lack necessary public support for an era of deep and painful cuts: instant unpopularity beckons. Will Labour find the verve and imagination to reinvent itself in an opposition time that could be short?