Steve Hilton: "Everything must have changed by 2015. Everything."

Tim Montgomerie

In his column for the Mail on Sunday James Forsyth writes:

"At a gathering of Tory Cabinet Ministers on Monday, the Prime Minister’s political secretary Stephen Gilbert presented polling evidence to them which showed that when asked what the Coalition was doing, the public thought only of the cuts."

But as Andrew Rawnsley points out in his Observer column, this government is radical on nearly every front:

"Just about anywhere you look in Whitehall, there is a secretary of state unleashing upheaval. Ken Clarke challenges two decades of orthodoxy about the criminal justice system. Michael Gove battles the educational establishment to create his "free schools". Iain Duncan Smith has ambitions to be the man who definitively reformed welfare. Chris Huhne is dramatically recasting energy pricing. Nick Clegg wants to rewrite large parts of the constitution. Over at health, Andrew Lansley proposes the greatest upheaval in the NHS since its foundation."

Rawnsley, describing the government as Maoist, comes up with this great quote:

"[Ministers] are urged on from within Number 10 by the prime minister's principal strategist, Steve Hilton, who is probably the most Maoist person in the government. He has been heard to tell colleagues: "Everything must have changed by 2015. Everything."

Gosh.

Meanwhile here is what CCHQ want party members to think of the new government's achievements. It comes from a fundraising leaflet that popped through my letter box yesterday: