This has got to be my favourite story regarding a new mover: Simon Burns, newly moved to Transport has previous convictions for running a cyclist over in his 4×4, outside Parliament no less: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/4449654/Tory-MP-fined-over-Parliament-car-crash.html

Once again the Palace of Westminster’s in house piano (the lib dems) have been played like a Steinway. We now have a health Secretary who hates the NHS and wants to break it up and sell it off to the private sector. Thank goodness the lib dems abstained when they had the chance to send Hunt to the backbenchers for the rest of this parliament for his duplicity in the Murdoch takeover. The so called party of principles is revealed as a bunch of spineless morons.

We also now have a equal opportunities minister who hates gays, and an environment minister who is a knuckle dragging climate change denier. How are those lib dem principles doing now? But the usual head in sand lib dem glass is always half full dimwits cling on, and spout the nonsense about “fixing the economy” Hows that going by the way? Double dip recession, another 10 billion in cuts to welfare, as Osborne doubles down on austerity.

I have news for the lib dems, even if the economy turns round, and it is a big if, you will get no credit. The tories will take it all for themselves. You will be blamed for screwing over the disabled, and the poor.

Never mind, you can console yourselves with David Laws. A man who stole £56 thousand in expenses from the tax payers. Imagine if he had done the same on housing benefits,? 3 years in jail? Instead he was banned for 1 week from parliament, and then a back bencher at full salary. Don’t you just love those Lie Dem principles?

All good fun stuff – but probably it won’t make much difference to anything, be it the country or Cameron’s leadership.

The right of his party will continue to agitate, his ministers will continue to dither (especially as a couple of rare non-dithers have been effectively sacked in Clarke and Greening), and the general laissez-faire principles that are so crucial to both Lib Dems and Tories will continue to dominate government thinking.

Rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while shouting full steam ahead for the iceberg. Hunt promoted for being Cameron’s human shield during Leveson and extracting from Cameron the appointment of Bazalgette as head of the Arts Council (something Cameron was supposed to have been deeply opposed to according to Private Eye). Feeble Maria Miller promoted to culture where she’ll grin and go along with anything she’s told. Grayling, a serial liar, made minister for justice. IDS refusing to move from the DWP despite being the only one on the planet who doesn’t think universal credit will be a gigantic disaster. And still, the thickest, most charmless, ugliest man in the cabinet remains Chancellor, a man whose mathematical prowess was demonstrated by his promise to give 110%. However far to the right Cameron goes the right wing of his own party won’t be satisfied with anything less than withdrawal from Europe, the scrapping of all human rights, the abolition of income tax, the rebuilding of Hadrian’s Wall, the privatisation of air and daily whippings for the unemployed

What do the Liberals get out of it? The return of sticky fingered David Laws. Is there no debasement so gross and vile that the liberals won’t stand for? The only career left for Clegg is as a receiver in scat porn

No mention yet of the appointment of the new equalities minister who opposed gay addoption rights AND opposed legislation that provided for fertility treatment for lesbian couples.

Well played Maria Miller.

To you, Cameron showed his weakness by appeasing the Tory right. To the Tory right, he showed the party’s strength by ignoring the Lib Dems. I’m not sure there’s an indication that he’s lost power so much as reacted to changes in the balance of power in Westminster.

You only say he is weak and appeasing because you don’t like the decisions he made – but what makes you so sure that he would be more of a centrist if there was no pressure on him? Cameron has never shown any deeply held principles, only a desire to be PM. In opposition he was a centrist, in government a proper Tory.

The Department that ostentatiously sends out Bibles to schools, Bibles featuring both a preface by the Secretary State and a reference to his very person on the cover (why not a photograph?), now has both David Laws and Liz Truss as Ministers.

But it would be wrong to pick on one Department. In After The Party, a collection of reminisces published last year to mark the twentieth anniversary of the dissolution of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Andrew Pearmain writes: “I started sleeping with other women on my trips to London, other Communist students and even a Tory member of the NUS Executive whose taste for rough sex really shocked me; she later joined the SDP.” Well, she is not in the SDP, or even the Lib Dems, now…

John

The assumption in good political analysis is that a lurch to the left for Labour, or to the right for the Tories, is weakness.

The reason is that while leaders of both parties will come under pressure from die-hards and zealots to move away from centre-ground politics – centre-ground politics is centre-ground precisely because it roughly fits with what most people are comfortable with, and thus where elections tend to be won.

Elections are rarely won by following a policy path driven by one’s core support – because the core support tends to be more extreme and zealous than the public as a whole or business as a whole. It never does to listen to isolated special interest groups, even if those groups are your own political party.

Patrick McLoughlin

“Although a member of the NUM he broke ranks during the 1984 miners strike and later came to national attention when he stood up at the Conservative Party Conference to announce that he was a working miner”

“His career within the Coal Board was fast tracked to avoid a hostile reaction on the return of fellow miner following the end of the strike. Rising from belt attendant to Area Marketing”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_McLoughlin

The last couple of years has shown the true face of the Tories. Never again will any Tory leader be able to pretend that the party has in any way shape or form been “detoxified” It never will be, it is what it is.

Their hard right, Thatcherite, eurosceptic, socially reactionary policies appeal to about one third of the electorate, and no more. Not enough to win a majority. To do that they need to convince enough people that they are at least semi-human, and dwell in the modern world. This government has completely undermined any prospect of them doing that, and thus of extending their support far beyond their core supporters, and of winning a majority on their own.

They have also destroyed any prospect of another coalition with the Lib Dems, who, assuming they are not wiped out will never touch the Tories with a bargepole ever again! Thus foreclosing the Tories only other conceivable route to seeing power again.

Interesting times!

@ Graham:

“Their hard right, Thatcherite, eurosceptic, socially reactionary policies appeal to about one third of the electorate, and no more.”

It’s deeply depressing to think that I’m sharing oxygen with something like 15m such uncaring, self-serving, xenophobic, sociopathic, greedy, reactionary sacks of crap…