George Bathurst is a Conservative councillor for Windsor, Lead Member for Policy & Performance at RBWM and one of the organisers of the 2nd Conservative Renewal Conference. Tickets are on sale at www.conservativerenewal.org. You can follow George on Twitter here, and the Conference itself here.
David Cameron is not leading a coalition just with the LibDems. As the vote on Syria illustrated, he is attempting to lead a three-party coalition including Labour.
As the dust settles on David Cameron's Parliamentary Calamity, it becomes increasingly clear that he sees himself not merely as leader of the Conservative Party but of the political party of Great Britain. Sane, sensible people agree with him and everybody else is a bastard/gadfly/racist/disgrace (add your insult here).
In this, as in so many other ways, Cameron is an echo of Blair. The difference is that Blair's rhetoric may have soared but he didn't often lose touch with political reality (at least until Iraq). Cameron, by contrast, is attempting to govern without reference to the usual laws of political gravity. Having left behind the leaden clothes of the mere mortals in his party, he has forced through a remarkable series of Acts, in the teeth of fierce opposition from his own side and the support of the official opposition. There is a remarkable degree of consensus between Labour and the Cameron Tories on all the big issues, including gay marriage, HS2, the EU, bashing the rich, the desirability of a large state and - above all - the economy: the spending commitments of the two largest parties differed by less than a rounding error before the last election and since then, the Coalition has in fact spent more than Labour promised to.
That Cameron has got as far as he has, pursuing his personal agenda rather than that of his party, is testament either to his great political skill or how unbalanced our constitution has become.