PM: ‘Politics is getting really interesting at the moment’

How powerful is the PM? Well recently the import of external factors has been especially important in evaluating PM’s performances. As Macmillan once famously said ‘Events, dear by, events!’. A few interesting article in today’s press which look at the performances over the last year of key political figures and give some valuable ammunition for the ‘PM and Cabinet’ Topic.

1. Steve Richards in the Independent looks at the performances of Ed Balls, Alex Salmond and David Cameron - and his conclusion is obvious in the title Well done Alex and Ed, but David wins by a head. He asserts “Leaders or aspiring leaders must try to appear overwhelmingly dominant, when mostly they are not”.

A useful excerpt on Cameron - who is also described as being elusive to the point of being uninteresting is:Cameron is the third candidate. He leads on the narrowest of stages. To the one side of him are the increasingly stroppy Liberal Democrats, on the other is an assertive parliamentary party that cannot be easily appeased with the promise of ministerial jobs. Prime ministerial patronage is a powerful weapon in controlling a party, but Cameron has fewer jobs at his disposal in a coalition. Meanwhile, economic storms are brewing on a scale that makes those of the 1970s and 1980s seem little more than minor breezes.

Other leaders in comparable circumstances were exhausted and demoralised. Harold Wilson leading a hung parliament in the 1970s, John Major in the economic doldrums in the early 1990s and Gordon Brown in 2008, all lost their humour and political guile partly because there was no cause for laughter and they felt trapped politically. Cameron remains vivacious and witty and is implementing a radical Tory agenda without having won the election. In policy terms, he is skating on thin ice and I suspect the ice will crack next year, but, for now, we are looking back.

1. Another article, if unfortunately hiding behind the Times paywall, is Let’s be honest. How did the leaders do in 2011? by Mehdi Hasan, Tim Montgomerie and Mark Pack. It comments:

Pity poor Ed Miliband. By any objective assessment, he has had a good year. His leadership is secure, his party united. Despite losing in the Scottish Parliament elections to the SNP, Mr Miliband gained more than 800 seats in May’s local elections and won five parliamentary by-elections in a row. Labour consistently polls at around 40 per cent and has been ahead of the Conservatives for much of 2011, as austerity failed and growth ground to a halt.