His economic strategy has gone up in smoke and so have crucial relationships in Europe. Violent urban disorder erupted on his watch over the summer and scandal forced the resignation of a key member of the cabinet in the autumn. The northern part of his kingdom is threatening to break away. His closeness to senior members of the Murdoch empire has been a serial, personal embarrassment. On a core element of the government's domestic programme – the NHS legislation – the prime minister has been forced into reverses which cost political capital without doing anything to reduce the risk that it will turn into a terrible mess.
And yet David Cameron ends the year on something of a high. His backbenchers greeted his return from Brussels with a hero's welcome. He may eventually come to rue raising expectations that he cannot ultimately fulfil, but for the moment he has won what one influential Tory MP calls "a breathing space" with his party during which "we will get off his back about Europe". He squelched Ed Miliband at the last Prime Minister's Questions of the year. Despite a bleak economic outlook, accompanied by the worst unemployment figures in 17 years, some polling has the Conservatives nudging ahead of Labour. The languishing Lib Dems are reduced to sighing with relief when they can just squeak a third place in a byelection. Giddier Tory MPs can even be heard speculating about engineering a snap general election. That is silly chatter, but the fact that it is talked about at all is indicative of the state of play as we come to the close of this turbulent year: David Cameron is on top.
This is not because the prime minister has had 12 months which deserve the description brilliant. In many respects, it has been a year which has exposed a variety of flaws, limitations and contradictions in both his personal style and political strategy. The "big society", which was once to be his governing theme, is rarely heard of these days. Even he appears to have given up making speeches trying to sell it. His premiership is becoming defined by austerity and Europe, the opposite of what he originally intended.
Yet he remains ascendant. That is because all politics is relative. One reason he seems to be in a good place for a prime minister is because international rivals and domestic competitors are in much worse ones. He leads a government which looks unusually robust when set beside many others. Rancour between Tories and Lib Dems is as nothing compared with the poisonous divisions in the US where government is paralysed by the deadlock between the White House and an obstructionist Congress. Whatever its faults, Britain's coalition can pass a budget and enact legislation. Greece and Italy have "technocratic" governments – in other words, governments that no one voted for – imposed on them by the failure of conventional democratic politics and the terror of the bond markets. I have lost count of the number of summits at which Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel met to resolve the euro crisis and then failed to do so.
George Osborne has been forced to rewrite his deficit reduction strategy, an event that ought to be a humiliation for a chancellor. A mere 18 months after he vaingloriously proclaimed that he would have the job done in a parliament, he now promises a diet of gruel into the foreseeable future. But the markets have continued to tolerate the size of Britain's debts, and most voters continue to buy the prime minister's excuses, because this government seems more decisive and stable than most.
On the domestic front, too, David Cameron is flattered by comparisons. He basks in the reflected failure of others. After Ed Miliband's latest belly flop, one Tory MP, not normally a cruel man, chortled to me that the Labour leader "is the gift that keeps on giving". Labour is having a renewed bout of jitters about its leadership and long-term prospects without evincing any serious sign that it knows how to enhance either.
The Lib Dems are furious but trapped. Nick Clegg only learnt of the denouement of the Brussels summit in a four-in-the-morning call from David Cameron after the fact. Many Lib Dems see this as the second serious betrayal of the year, the first one being Mr Cameron breaking a "gentlemen's agreement" over the conduct of the AV referendum when he licensed the "No" campaign to launch personal attacks on the Lib Dem leader. Lesson for Mr Clegg and his party: if you are going to strike a "gentlemen's agreement" be first sure that the other party is actually a gentleman. Angry as they may be, the Lib Dems have nowhere to go when collapsing the coalition and triggering a sudden election would be the proverbial turkey voting for an early Christmas.
No figure within his own party has the stature or popularity to threaten David Cameron at present. He is not constantly menaced by an internal rival in the way that Tony Blair was by Gordon Brown.
This is not entirely healthy because it exacerbates an already established tendency to be complacently insouciant at times. He has shown himself to be cavalier and careless: at home over the NHS reforms and abroad when he failed to cultivate any allies before the Brussels summit. In a speech on Friday, the prime minister called himself a "vaguely practising" Christian. Senior civil servants and colleagues sometimes wonder whether he is not also a "vaguely practising" prime minister.
On other occasions, he has shown a capacity to rise to events with clarity and boldness. He took a riskily forward position in the early stages of the Libyan crisis, insisting that a UN mandate for action could be secured when many doubted it and pushing for military intervention against considerable initial resistance from both other governments and his own officialdom and military.
To Tories of a Eurosceptic bent, which is to say nearly all of them these days, his other demonstration of boldness was to say no to a new European treaty. This is much more arguable. It was a decision not so much willed as forced upon him by the refusal of every other European leader to indulge Britain's demands and the pressure from his MPs, 81 of whom had earlier rebelled over a referendum on withdrawal, and many more of whom were with the mutineers in spirit if not in the division lobby.
One theme that has emerged over the past 12 months is that David Cameron is not very good at relationships; certainly not at some kinds of crucial relationships. He has mismanaged both his footsoldiers at home and his international peers. It is admittedly not easy to deal with Nicolas Sarkozy – a volatile grandstander facing a difficult election within months and desperate to divert attention from his own failures and predicaments by abusing the ros beefs. But Mr Cameron ought to be asking himself why he has not got a better relationship with someone as ideologically sympathetic as Angela Merkel and how it was that he found himself without a friend in the room at the Brussels summit. European leaders who normally prefer the British to the French found the approach of Team Cameron arrogant in its assumptions and aloof in its diplomacy.
This, interestingly, echoes the complaint you often hear back home from within his own party. I have spent more lunches and dinners than I care to remember listening to Tory MPs complain about how remote they feel from their leader, often getting on to the subject before the first glass of wine. Now, it is only fair to observe that I have never known a time, whether the prime minister was Tory or Labour, when MPs didn't moan that they were unloved by their leader, especially when the MP in question felt that his talents had been overlooked for a ministerial post. Sensible leaders do something about it. Tony Blair found buttering-up backbenchers a bore so he employed people at Number 10 whose job it was to do it for him. There seems to be no one in David Cameron's Downing Street tasked with party management. Many a Tory MP has a bitter anecdote about an occasion when they or a colleague have felt snubbed by the prime minister or cold-shouldered by his operation. "It will be his downfall in the end," one Conservative MP remarked to me recently.
"Out of touch" and "arrogant" are also the words most often to be heard from focus groups of voters when they are asked to discuss what they don't like about this prime minister. This is not necessarily fatal so long as it is balanced by things they admire. It is certainly better for a leader to be regarded as too confident than the opposite. Similar complaints of arrogance were made about Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher and both won a hat trick of elections before they were finally undone. For now at least, David Cameron's approval and leadership ratings easily best those of his rivals. "He's not that good," says one senior Labour figure who despairs of his party's failure to capitalise on the coalition's many difficulties. "But Cameron doesn't have to be that good against us."
In politics, you don't need to be the best. You just have to be better than the rest.
Comments
18 December 2011 12:17AM
So what has he done to gain approval ? A nasty person appeals to the nasty side of nasty people telling them that it's OK to feel like that - to hate the people they hate for the reasons that they do.
18 December 2011 12:19AM
Morning Andrew!
Clegg's the biggest fool of all - he keeps coming out with the sentence that he will never leave the coalition as it has to stay together for the best interests of the country because of all the uncertainty etc. Therefore he gives Cameron green light go to do as he wishes as he has already stated he won't end the coalition so has taken away any bargaining tool from the table. Cameron must think all his Christmases have come at once - unless they are really in this together a lot more deeper than any of us could have envisaged - which is even worse news - if there's no brake to control Cameron the crash landing will probably come sooner than we think.
18 December 2011 12:21AM
Is this a reference to an incident at Eton?
Because it certainly can't be said of his own performance or that of his government. The coaltion has lurched from disaster to catastrophe and has never offered anything other than an endless capacity to blame others: be it the last Government, snow, royal weddings or the French.
Why talk up this rabble?
18 December 2011 12:22AM
More sycophantic nonsense from a paper I used to admire.
Have the media ever stopped wondering why this idiot gets so much attention?
Yes its you and when this all ends in tears as it surely will I hope you go down the same plug hole as the people you so unequivocally support.
18 December 2011 12:24AM
Quite right LaC. Clegg has now emerged as the Tammy Wynette of Briish politics; determined to stand by his man regardless of the grotesque consequences for the LibDems or the country as a whole.
18 December 2011 12:26AM
In every picture I see of Cameron, including the one above, ne looks constipated. Ironic really, considering his government's policies, particularly its economic ones, have a positive laxative effect on me.
All AW is really saying is that Cameron is marginally less shite than many other world leaders, and the country is marginally less up the creek than many other countries. We're still up the creek, and with Cameron and Osborne attempting to row...
18 December 2011 12:26AM
Cameron's priorities are as follows in order of importance to him:
1. David Cameron
2. David Cameron's family
3. The Conservative Party
4. The City
5. Cameron's cronies
6. Tory voters
7. The Church of England
8. Eton College
9. The Royal Family
10. The Witney constituents
11. His investments
12. Larry the no. 10 cat
13 The British people
14 Boris Johnson
18 December 2011 12:32AM
The fact that the Tories have a 2-3 point lead in the polls says it all really. Middle England are addicted to voting for them.
Being from Central Scotland, previously I would have voted Labour had they put a monkey up for nomination. Having grown up in a Scotland devastated by Thatcher's legacy this was a quite normal position in a normal working class household.
We have had 17 odd years of Thatcherism in 3 different decades yet this generation seems insistent on voting in her favourite child for yet another term. And this time they may get a majority. God knows that they will implement then.
So, it is at this time where I would like to apologies to Guardian readers residing in the North of England and all other Non-Conservative voting people in the United Kingdom. I will be voting for the SNP at the next election, or yes, if a referendum on independance happens prior to that date.
This pains me greatly as someone who has remained staunchly Unionist throughout his life and is actually embarassed by some of the rubbish spouted by Nationalists towards their English neighbours.
However, Scotland does not need another 17 years of Thatcherite rule. It cannot afford to be used as another testing ground for radical ideas the Tories may have. And to be honest, the SNP have done a decent job in Scotland. Currently, they are significantly to the left of The Labour Party.
It actually pains me to consider a Union breakup, but the people of Scotland have no other choice and it will happen soon.
Good riddance to middle England.
18 December 2011 12:33AM
I think the problem is indeed the weakness of any alternative; in my lifetime there was always the hope of a decent Labour government (in practical terms) or a decent LD government (in theoretical terms), and now both options are defunct. At least we don't have the grotesque sideshow of the US system, but, for heaven's sake, the world deserves better than the current also-rans.
No hope that any party or any individual could do any better. Cameron & his crew are very lucky to bestride this moment in history, midgets surrounded by pygmies. (or should that be vice versa?).
I think I'll hibernate until the rise of Prime Minister Balls (and his sidekick, deputy PM Clegg).
Pass the hemlock.
18 December 2011 12:33AM
Cameron has become a snake oil preacher.
18 December 2011 12:33AM
That was D. Miliband wasn't it?
18 December 2011 12:33AM
Popular? The only thing that stops him from topping my hate list is Michael Gove.
18 December 2011 12:33AM
Clegg is the Victor Frankenstein of British politics.
18 December 2011 12:36AM
now that cameron's decided to become a christian
might I suggest that he reads the sermon on the mount
it's about helping the poor and sick that sort of thing
kind of like socialism
just a thought
18 December 2011 12:37AM
Good luck to you my friend, if the North of England had the chance of escaping middle England, this Northerner would be voting for it.
18 December 2011 12:39AM
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18 December 2011 12:40AM
I can't see Cameron's honeymoon lasting much longer.
For one thing Cameron should avoid verbal spats with Rowan Williams. The Archbishop is so obviously Cameron's intellectual superior that Dave's attempts at debate are painfully embarassing to watch. Rowan William's has tried to steer his flock towards a modern, inclusive future and despite rough waters has managed to keep the anglican communion and the CofE together.
Cameron has managed to alienate most of europe, the USA and much of the caribbean, as well as all but 36% of the UK electorate. Over the next 12-18 months both domestic and foreign policy challenges look set to overwhelm this government. Intellectually they are like the emperor with no clothes and it is only a matter of time before everyone realises Cameron and his cabinet are as clueless about running a country as Frank Gallagher.
18 December 2011 12:40AM
... On the domestic front, too, David Cameron is flattered by comparisons. He basks in the reflected failure of others. After Ed Miliband's latest belly flop, one Tory MP, not normally a cruel man, chortled to me that the Labour leader "is the gift that keeps on giving".
Well, there you have it - an opposition that is utterly incapable of holding anyone to account ... because they are all, all, vacuous, money grubbing charlatans who place self interest above party and country.
What a sickening parade of career politicos, left and right and centre, snouting at the great trough of Westminster.
18 December 2011 12:40AM
couldnt agree more, I think wales, the north and scotland would make a lovely combined country
18 December 2011 12:47AM
The big freeze was a factor Dave should have been able to mitigate, having shovelled enough snow in his time.
18 December 2011 12:50AM
Is that really so, Mr Rawnsley? You seem to have missed a great deal of development over the past week.
Within a week after the left criticising Mr Cameron of isolating Britain from Euro-land the evidence is more in favour of Mr Cameron's judgement than against.
The rating agencies have at best put Germany, France and the rest of the Euro-land on credit watch. They have also said that the all shining all singing new strategy agreed by the twenty six are doomed to fail. Some of those who sighted the agreement- Hungary, Sweden et at are having second thoughts, the Euro-Land borrowing costs have moved up while Britain's remains the same. French are reduced to hand wringing and moaning with "worse economic figures, the rating agencies have not down graded Britain's credit ratings.
Above all Labour has refused to say that they would have signed the agreement. Lib-Dem have swung both ways but are continuing in the government. In contrast to the political posturing of the left in Britain- almost a fervent desire actually- Britain is not isolated and Germany wishes Britain to participate in future meetings. For disingenuous reasons French are growing and moaning to cover up their failure.
All this does not sound like a failure. It sounds more like a success and good judgement. He has saved the British taxpayer loads of money by not aping the last labour governments negotiating model and we all are better off for it.
18 December 2011 12:53AM
Since when was it his kingdom?
See, that's the trouble with aristocratic Tory PM's - they think of the country as their personal fiefdom.
18 December 2011 12:55AM
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18 December 2011 12:55AM
It is difficult to argue that Cameron has not alienated many European governments and who has so many friends that he can afford to lose those closest to him. 'No man is an island, entire of itself...'
18 December 2011 12:56AM
As is evidenced by a massive strike on 30 November and political isolation within the EU.
In your universe, did England also win the rugby world cup?
18 December 2011 12:57AM
Still, haven't come to terms with David Miliband, the Blair Mark II clone losing the leadership election have we Andrew?
18 December 2011 12:59AM
Now you're being silly.
18 December 2011 1:01AM
On the downside for both myself and Cameron we're fatter, greyer and balder at the end of 2011 than at the start.
18 December 2011 1:07AM
Cameron is copying Blair and it seems the public likes this? We will soon be going to war with Iran because he is a Blair clone and will do the bidding of the US. Let's hope this single Poll is not a true representation of the Voting public, otherwise whilst we are aware the Tories are harsh, they will be more so, particularly when awarded? a Majority!
18 December 2011 1:07AM
Bit like the UK - only we don't have "technocrats" just a plutocracy
18 December 2011 1:32AM
What you need to succeed:
The support of the opinion-makers in mainstream media organizations;
Large donations flowing into your party coffers from grateful elites;
Bond market vigilantes applauding the high priority you afford them;
Fascist anti-protest legislation;
A castrated coalition partner & a concussed opposition;
Xenophobia;
Public apathy.
18 December 2011 1:35AM
Be fair Andrew - one tory MP has recently shown great enthusiasm for the policies of a famous German politician.
18 December 2011 1:37AM
Usual boring unsubstantiated far left word salad. It really doesn't matter how many times the usual suspects attempt this transparent attempt to emotionally blackmail the population into agreeing with Leftism it's never going to work. They remind me of those sub-standard X-Factor contestants who try to garner votes by constantly filling up and quivering their lips for the benefit of the cameras. It might impress 12 yr olds but most grown-ups know what they're up to.
18 December 2011 1:38AM
No point in getting annoyed with Mr Rawnsley.
He exists in the rareified Westminster bubble, where its all a jolly decadent game to gossip and talk about politician`s as if they were racehorses or football teams. None of what he says has any connection with what people outside Westminster are experiencing. Its all such a jolly amusing game. Like pulling petals of a flower, just to see it broken, and then toss it away.
18 December 2011 1:40AM
Call Me Dave has had a NIGHTMARE year (the one exception being his Libyan adventure), just nobody wants to talk about it. The media would rather tell us how awful Ed Miliband is rather than poke holes in our glorious leader.
Remember the summer riots? Dave spent the first 2 days of it in a £10,000 a week, 15 bedroom Tuscan villa, posing for staged photographs with a waitress he earlier refused to tip.
Out of touch? You bet he is. But nobody seems to care.
18 December 2011 1:40AM
Pathetic. Prat dresses up in inappropriate fancy dress and get's sacked. Hold the front page.Lefty tries to smear eurosceptics as nazis. Grow up man.
18 December 2011 1:43AM
Nice selection of mindless insults there ! Congrats !
I think you left out Na-na Nana-Nah at the end though.
18 December 2011 1:45AM
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18 December 2011 1:46AM
Cameron: over-indulgent, over-egged and, unfortunately, over us all ...
18 December 2011 1:48AM
Earlier this week, Martin Rowson gave us an excellent cartoon about toys and prams.
Case proved.
18 December 2011 1:55AM
".... over-confident, cavalier and careless… and still on top."
Well, yes, because he has the shamelessness, unscrupulousness, sense of entitlement, thick, insensitive skin, and carelessness of consequences of his background, bellowing away happily and chortling at Milibands cautious, principled hesitancy.
Everyone loves a Lord, don'tcha know, what??
18 December 2011 1:56AM
Why are Cameron and Osborne not being challenged over the misleading statements they make frequently in parliament?
Cameron's attention to detail is shockingly bad.
18 December 2011 1:57AM
Nope, he understands the people, in a way the graundian does not.
18 December 2011 2:02AM
Cameron and his party don't have a majority in the House of Commons, but he acts as if he does, because there is no credible opposition.
Milliband, of course, doesn't even have a majority in his own party, and it shows. He leads his own coalition; of Blairites, Brownites , Ballsites and the public sector unions. He can't deal with the overriding issue, which is the deficit, because he can't, or won't, upset his own coalition.
18 December 2011 2:03AM
These would be the same rating agencies that rated all of those worthless debt-backed securities as Triple-A, would they? The same agencies that didn't see the crash coming? The same agencies that are going to have to do some very serious explaining if the banks are ever forced to mark-to-market all the debt-backed paper they're holding, paper the ratings agencies you're so impressed by gave their highest rating but are, in fact, worthless? Those rating agencies?
And you still take them seriously? Awww...how perfectly sweet...
18 December 2011 2:08AM
We'll he knows how to scare the hell out of disabled people, I'll give you that.
18 December 2011 2:09AM
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18 December 2011 2:18AM
Yes, spiv does suit him ...... velvet lapels, why not?
He's a vaccuous stuffed shirt with a nasty streak.
18 December 2011 2:24AM
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18 December 2011 2:26AM
You're right. Na-na Nana-Nah Cheers.