Searching for Dave

THE trouble with David Cameron, according to one of his ministers, is that he does not identify himself staunchly with yeoman party issues like immigration, low taxes and a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. Instead he lurches into rows over legalising gay marriage and House of Lords reform—subjects that neither he nor the public much cares about. What a waste of energy.

No, cry the party’s diehard modernisers. What the prime minister really needs to do is renew his vows to centre-ground government, from the “vote blue, go green” environmental pledge languishing in the file of forgotten enthusiasms, to a crusade for social mobility, trumpeted over a year ago and already suffering from neglect. Somewhere in the middle of this ideological tug-of-war, Mr Cameron has to govern.

It has been a dismal year so far. Irritation over trivial tax grabs in the March budget, many of them subsequently reversed, made the government seem weak. Then the argument over House of Lords reform tipped already grumpy MPs into outright rebelliousness. One senior Conservative minister in the Lords sent a long e-mail to the prime minister bemoaning the lack of drive in Downing Street and complaining that the present growth measures are inadequate. Seeking a firmer footing on which to end the parliamentary year, Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, appeared jointly at an event on July 16th to announce improvements to the rail network. Alas, the prospect of electrifying the London-to-Sheffield route will make few hearts beat faster.

Voters increasingly deem the Tory leader woebegone. Mr Cameron remains tolerated as a leader. But a poll by YouGov shows the proportion of Britons who think he “sticks to what he believes in” has collapsed, from 30% in late January to just 17%. Worse still, a different survey showed Labour was considered the most competent of the three big parties for the first time since the coalition was forged in May 2010.

Economic uncertainty is the root cause of alarm: prime ministers are forgiven a good deal if people feel secure. Yet frustrations abound even among the previously supportive. Chief among them is a lack of certainty about the prime minister’s priorities and intentions. He needs a gospel to preach. At the moment, nobody quite knows what Cameronism means.

This is an odd problem, for the leader of such a hyperactive government. On Mr Cameron’s watch, the welfare state is replacing labyrinthine entitlements with a single “universal credit” intended to favour those who work over long-term benefit recipients who try not to. Free schools and academies, which are outside local-authority control, are expanding at a gallop. Whitehall is being pruned and civil servants’ performance better monitored. The police are to be held to account by elected commissioners. Quieter but useful reforms are being made to criminal justice. And much greater openness about the standards of services in hospitals and police forces is being demanded to deter tax-funded bodies from hiding their shortcomings.

Yet Mr Cameron is strongly associated with little of this. The prime minister comes across as a man who is intellectually persuaded by the case for reform rather than as a radical spirit. The Tory leader rose through the ranks as an energetic interpreter of new ideas rather than as a policy devotee. In a brief period as shadow education spokesman, his enthusiasm was not big-bang structural reforms but micro-initiatives like the teaching of phonics to improve literacy. He has tended to contract out reforms to strong ministers like Michael Gove in the education department and Iain Duncan-Smith, the work and pensions secretary. As a result, key policies tend to end up more associated with these men than with the prime minister.

Come out from behind the curtain

Coalition has blunted the contours of the prime minister. Mr Clegg recently joked (sort of) about feeling “gradually lobotomised by the sheer neurosis and weight of everyday government activity”. Mr Cameron has a similar problem. Nick Boles, a backbench Tory MP and former think-tank boss, retorts that the top job is about reassuring voters that no unnecessary risks are being taken and about “keeping the show on the road” in testing times. Tony Blair, was, he adds, more popular when he promised limited goals like smaller class sizes than when he began major reforms of health and education.

But reforms do matter—and not just to policy wonks. Signals from the top determine what is ultimately delivered by politicians and what is not. One reason a bill to reform health care became bogged down is that Mr Cameron did not engage early enough with its content, nor explain why he wanted it. Similarly, schools reforms slowed down under Gordon Brown’s leadership in Labour’s last term because the education system detected his lack of enthusiasm. Officials, ministers and party foot-soldiers like to know what the boss wants. If the boss isn’t sure, or doesn’t want to say, the fog descends.

Mr Blair’s recollections of his time at the helm are instructive. Among the tales of triumph in “A Journey”, his memoirs, lurk angst-filled passages about reformist intentions thwarted and chances missed. “Be clear that if someone isn’t screaming somewhere, it probably isn’t going to work,” he concludes. Mr Cameron might object that he carries the burdens of a less bubbly economy and testy coalition partners, and that many reforms which stalled under Labour are now progressing nicely. The ghost of Downing Street past nonetheless has a point. Prime ministers are remembered for what they dedicate themselves to changing—even at the cost of bearing more of the scars.

^{Economist.com/blogs/bagehot}