Cameron

I’m watching BBC Parliament right now, and they are showing Cameron’s emergency speech from yesterday and a couple of thoughts occur to me.

 

What was going on inside Team Cameron that made them think they had to do this.  Is he wanting to signal the graveness of the situation and his mature responsible attitude to it (read “Dunkirk spirit”)?

 

Or was he aware that the momentum was building back to Labour and he needed to put himself in front of it?

 

Maybe he was worried that none of his front bench would be capable of getting headlines from the conference yesterday and he was the only one capable of doing that?  That’s got to be a worrying thought.

 

Finally, he’s a decent chap and thought the honourable thing to do for the markets was signal how there will be no political wrangling in this country?  I believe this one is true, but so are the others.

 

He stood up and backed-up George Osborne, and that can only be because Osborne has taken a knock after being quoted in Gordon Brown’s speech.

 

In other words, he’s become the only national heavy hitter in his team, he knows it and it’s going to start taking its toll on him.

 

And finally – normally when I see Cameron do something unusual like this, I think “clever boy” for grabbing the initiative and swinging it his way.  Yesterday he was desperately trying to bring the initiative back to him and he looked weaker for it.

 

How good does it feel that for the first time in ages, Labour is setting the direction?

 

Dominic Grieve is speaking now.... good grief.....