Cameron calls on Hain to answer the public's questions or he should go

Interviewed by Andrew Marr this morning the Conservative leader said that Peter Hain cannot go on as yesterday - issuing a statement to the press and then scurrying away without answering questions.  Mr Cameron said the Hain situation was another example of the Prime Minister dithering.

Other highlights (not verbatim) of David Cameron's interview:

• Labour would certainly have lost the General Election if Gordon Brown had called one last autumn - and the Conservatives had every chance of winning it.
• The Tory revival in the polls didn't happen after Brown had 'bottled it' but because voters became enthusiastic about the programme we unveiled at our Party Conference.
  
• The Osborne and Hain cases are "completely different".  All of the Osborne money was declared to the Electoral Commission and an email from the House of Commons' authorities appeared to suggest that further disclosure was not necessary.
• I support a cut in the amount of money that a party can spend at a General Election - that is when political parties can get "carried away".  I do not support controls in between elections because we need to make it fair for candidates against MPs who enjoy big allowances.
• It's possible that planning for an autumn General Election may have distracted Labour and stopped them from making the decisions that needed to be taken on Northern Rock.
• We need a new Bank of England Act to put the Bank in full charge of decisions to deal with financial crises.
• We will give the Bank Governor a one eight year, non-renewable term in order to strengthen independence.
• We will definitely have a referendum on the EU treaty if it hasn't then been ratified.  If it has been ratified we'll look at how to proceed then.

Mr Cameron also appeared to say that he will back Labour on nuclear energy but that the Government needed to do much more on decentralised energy and renewable energy.

At the end of the interview Mr Cameron agreed that parliament needed more MPs with backgrounds in small business and in the voluntary sector.

Comments

[Tony Makara]

"We will definitely have a referendum on the EU treaty if it hasn't then been ratified. If it has been ratified we'll look at how to proceed then."

Going into an election offering a post-ratification referendum would give the party an edge. It not only re-enforces the party's democratic credentials but adds clear distance to the Conservative position on Europe combined with that of Labour and the Liberals. Failure to have a post-ratification treaty could be portrayed by Gordon Brown as David Cameron 'not keeping a promise' and being 'weak'.

[Tony Makara]

Typo: Should read:

"Failure to hold a post-ratification referendum"

[Andrew James]

Note that the BBC previously had the Osborne 'story' at No. 2, whereas Sky's website didn't appear to have any coverage of Osborne in their politics section, let alone the news front page. BBC has now changed the slant of that article to re-focus on Hain. Brown Broadcasting are clearly desperate to get the Tories' hands dirty.

[Jennifer Wells]

Very nice photo of David Cameron.

[James Maskell]

Cameron says that Labour would have lost the election. I would dispute that. I recall that the grassroots on this site were pretty depressed about the Tory chances until Brown called it off...

Its a lot of guff really. The Tories werent prepared for a General Election, though of course in public they say they were. I shudder to think what the manifesto would have been had Brown called it!

Cameron needs to come out and make the referendum pledge, irrelevent of the Treaty's status.

[Dave B]

The interview is now available from the BBC website.

[Paul D]

I can only speak for our seat's candidate, but he was elated after Chicken Saturday

As regards the EU treaty referendum, any attempts to change it post-ratification would be tricky. I agree it would give us an edge but I suspect we'll have far more important things to do in the first months of a Tory government than pick a bruising fight with the EU

[David Sergeant]

Re Haine, Mathew d'Anacona in the Sunday Telegraph seems to have managed to grasp a fundemental point about New Labour;

"you realise something appalling; our governing party really has come to regard itself as special and different, so busy making the world a better place, and exercising its devine right to power, that it does not have time to obey its own laws. We can't we little people have the courtesy to see that and let them get on with being marvellous."

The idea that this £100k was not reported as a oversite is rediculous for whatever reason it was a decision. I do wonder what Haines and other candidates for the Deputy leadership spent their money on, bit surprised no one asked.

Since 1992 Tories have been playing a political game on outdated rules and just targeting Haines misses the point. This is a demonstration, yet again, of Labour's approach to public life.

[Cllr John M Ward]

This was a very good performance by Cameron; and I have to admit that I haven't always been a hundred percent certain about him (though generally favourable towards him).

I think what might be useful would be a fisking of both this interview and the Gordon Brown one last week, including not only how the interviewees performed (including content, professionalism and body language) but also how the interviewer behaved in both cases -- specifically any difference in approach/emphasis/fairness between the two interviews.

I suspect this could be very interesting, and only regret that I am not good enough to do this myself (as reading well-done instances of the same has made me realise).

[Bexie]

Hain is showing himself up to be devious and rather despicable. No one really beleives his story about not knowing where the donations had come from, and the story over this think tank looks like misrepresentation almost fraud. If I give money to the IEA I dont expect them to give it to the BNP and if they did I would be fairly upset about it.