Cameron's leadership: A Miraj

How amusing but also how appalling to hear David Cameron on the Today programme this morning, lashing out at anyone who has recently dared to criticise his leadership of the Tory party. I suppose if he attacks everybody, then that makes him inclusive.

Cameron was actually on the airwaves to tout his latest policy idea, which is to take away the right of appeal from children who have been excluded from schools. To my mind, as a school governor, the appeal process is vital, giving an opportunity for a child's case to be scrutinised by a higher 'court of appeal' than the school, allowing for justice to revisited and done if the exclusion has been unfair. Cameron, incidentally, got it wrong in saying that "perhaps" school governors could sit and hear exclusion cases as if that was some new idea that had just occurred to him. Governors already do that, the final decision does not rest with the head teacher as Cameron appears to believe.

Then it was on to the meat of the interview, Cameron's wobbly leadership of dissenting Conservatives.

Ali Miraj, on the board of two Tory policy reviews and the man who introduced Cameron at the launch of his leadership campaign, has become disillusioned, asking for "some substance and some credibility and not box-ticking and gimmickry". He has also said that "Cameron in my view has got substance, somewhere in there, but I'm afraid that in recent weeks, that has been taken over by PR."

Showing a spectacular lack of substance and a rather immoderate temper to judge by his rising tone of voice, Cameron hit out at Mr Miraj saying "I think listeners will draw their own conclusions about someone who one day asks for a peerage, to be elevated to the House of Lords, and the next minute launches a great attack on the leader of the Conservative Party."

With what evidence does Cameron make this serious assertion? Miraj has denied it.

Miraj, a former Conservative councillor and twice a parliamentary candidate, has responded: "Instead of engaging with the actual significant points I was making, he is trying to smear me now, which in my view is very, very disappointing and smacks of a complete lack of integrity. They can smear me as much as they want. They will be the losers if they don't engage with the points I have made."

Cameron then turned his anger on Lord Saatchi, who has said that "nicey-nicey" politics will not help the Tories win the next election. Cameron said, paying scant heed to the 18 years of Conservative rule (when of course the guiding Thatcherite motto was that there was no such thing as society) that his "answer to Maurice Saatchi is that the big question facing Britain today is how to mend our broken society."

Next up for scorn was Lord Stanley Kalms, the party donor, who last week dared to opine that Cameron's Conservatives "need to do some rethinking". Cameron retorted: "I don't think he knows what's going on in the Conservative party review groups. Stanley Kalms has never supported the Conservative party under my leadership. He takes a very backward looking view of these things."

I wonder whether any of this would be happening now if David Davis had won the Conservative leadership. Perhaps ordinary Conservative voters outside Mr Cameron's metro-bubble are wondering too. Is he thinking what they're thinking? I doubt it.