The PM would do well to remember that much of government is about authority, which, once lost, usually stays lost
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David Cameron will need some firm but fair discipline to get things under control. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
A Tory ministerial friend was cross with me for two unlikely reasons when I rang about the latest government mini-shambles on Sunday. One was my censorious assumption that the chancellor of the exchequer and his special adviser should not be watching a DVD comedy on the 15.11 train to Euston during a working Friday in the throes of a prolonged recession.
The other was over my casual assumption that George Osborne is privately wealthy enough to fork out for a first-class upgrade without a fuss. "Why assume that?" snapped my friend. It's a fair point – I don't know what access he has to parental wealth, though nor does my friend. I stand by both my complaints with the caveat that I would not begrudge a first-class taxpayers' ticket to cabinet ministers working on a train.
Alas, David Cameron stopped that, a bit of gesture politics to match the Labour's government's spiteful ban on senior military officers ("We're taking them down a peg or two") travelling in similar style. It is a depressing commentary on our times, especially when organised by newspapers, most of whose proprietors are not UK residents for tax purposes. You know who you are, lads. Hands up.
But it's always interesting to feel out of step with majority opinion, more stimulating in my experience. So I was also shocked this weekend when former Met police commissioner Lord (Ian) Blair reminded everyone why he wasn't up to the job from which the Tories sacked him. He advised people not to vote in next month's elections for police commissioners.
None of your business, matey, I'd say. It's a half-cock scheme but the duly elected government has ordained it and it's not your job to organise a boycott. I could – and will – say the same about the ousting of Andrew Mitchell as government chief whip after a four-week battle with the Tory press and the police, whose behaviour in this affair has also been pretty disreputable.
We expect lies and double standards from the newspapers – the BBC is belatedly showing itself more accountable over the Savile affair than any errant newspaper would – but the police, currently locked in an industrial dispute with ministers over their pay and conditions, have played this one pretty crudely and may yet regret it.
It took campaigning Chris Mullin, a brave ex-Labour MP, hero of several miscarriages of justice, to have the guts to point this out last week. There again, ministers regret it too if they blink in the face of a resurgent Fleet Street determined to show who's boss and fend off the kind of effective accountability that the Leveson inquiry may – may – be poised to propose. Politicians, cops and tabloids locked in an unseemly tussle again – pretty unedifying.
I don't assume that the received media version of what happened when Osborne travelled on the Wilmslow to Euston train is correct. The ITV journalist who tweeted the altercation, thereby sharing a potential scoop with the world, may have got it wrong. I simply don't know. Virgin Trains obliged the Osborne version, always a smart move in the favours bank.
Later, a tweeter calling himself "Larry" claimed the chancellor had tried it on before. True or false, we don't know that either. But in the modern media climate – Leveson or not – some stories are "too good to resist", especially if they involve elected public officials, always an easy target. As Twitter sources go, "Larry" isn't easily verified.
By the same token, no one knows exactly who or what to believe: bad-tempered Andrew Mitchell or the police version of what happened when the chief whip tried to ride his bike out of Downing Street as usual and encountered a stroppy cop. Probably both sides are a bit wrong, a bit right, bending the facts as people (and their trades unions) do.
But after suffering weeks of torment that pushed some good news off the front pages – unemployment down, inflation down, crime down etc – Cameron now has the worst of both worlds. The cabinet is reported to be divided on the issue. Well done, Dave. If No 10 had an Alastair Campbell or even an Andy Coulson behind the black door Mitchell might have been seen buying the offended copper a drink across the road in the Red Lion next day and the tabloid hunt thwarted.
So Norman Tebbit was right in yesterday's Observer to complain that the issue is not that the cabinet is full of toffs – as I explained here last week, it isn't – but that on a host of issues it doesn't look very competent. Thus Cameron's new crime initiative on Monday appears to contradict last week's message that crime is coming down – unlike energy prices.
Much of government is about authority, which, once lost, usually stays lost. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair both had a good run before losing their mojos, as John Major did not, losing it after two years over the sterling crisis, and Gordon Brown didn't either: losing it within three months over that botched 2007 election.
Cameron is in trouble and his effort to extract himself at his party conference is on the floor again.
It will take some firm but fair discipline to get things under control unless the administration wants to suffer the fate of John Major's, once the ragbag of cabinet "bastards" and Eurosceptic jihadis were allowed to run wild. On Sunday an obscure backbencher called Andrew Percy popped up on Radio 4's World This Weekend to argue that ministers should listen more to people like him.
I'm not sure why Percy – a class of 2010 MP who hails from Hull and used to be a history teacher – thinks he's got the answers, though he points out that he used to work in McDonald's as a teenager. When I checked him out, my ministerial friend called him "not nice, not clever and permanently grumpy". It's true that Cameron and his allies should make more of an effort to listen to backbenchers – always a problem for busy ministers – but not necessarily to take much notice.
The idea that any well-meaning novice can do politics as well as the next man or woman is a piece of contemporary nonsense, though the new chief whip, Sir George Young, will be far too polite to say so when next he chats with Percy. That self-important Radio 4 interview will have done for young Andy (35) among the colleagues without further help from the ever-civil Young, who was 25 and working for the National Economic Development Office when Cameron was born in 1966.
He's an old-school Etonian, nothing flashy, and used to be my MP. It's not ideal to appoint a 71-year-old as your chief whip. But circumstances are not ideal in 2012 and Young – runner-up for Speaker against both Mick Martin and John Bercow – is calm and respected, qualities that are always in short supply.
The awkward truth is that voters are in no mood to be generous to politicians whom they blame for mistakes that have sometimes been made by others, including voters themselves. The politicians respond by trying to break bad news gently – as Ed Miliband did when he was booed over cuts at Saturday's TUC rally – and Cameron tried to do at his party conference.
But both sides make the mistake of over-blaming each other for policy mistakes and personal failings. It's a mistake that damages the political class as a whole and emboldens the anti-politics lobby, which includes shifty police officers, bankers, newspaper proprietors and their eager minions, neo-fascist street activists and ever-growing numbers of voters who can't be arsed.
So what they need is the smack of firm government. Pull yourself together, Dave, you're the only prime minister we've got.
