More Tory complacency and the wrong policies for winning the election

First up, comes this from Ben Brogan on how the Olympics will do wonders for Cameron:

David Cameron is likely to find himself at his mid-term nadir, reviled for the pain he has had to inflict, and waiting for signs of the good times he promised would follow. No wonder he is talking privately of the Olympics as the "turning point" that could restore national morale and get him off the hook in time for a general election.

Then, this from James Forsyth:

The party’s plan to start at a fast pace also includes an 18-month opening session of parliament, with vastly reduced summer holidays for MPs. The aim is to get as much done as possible before Labour selects its new leader, something that is expected to happen at its autumn conference. To tinker with Whitehall structures straight away may seem odd, given the scale of what Cameron will have to do. But unless the Tories can fix the broken government machine, they won’t be able to deal effectively with the broken economy, broken society — or the broken politics.

But, there is the small matter of first winning the election, and for that to happen, having the right policies would be handy.  It is this little matter that Larry Elliot has an issue with:

David Cameron is having a mad monetarist moment. That's the only conclusion to be drawn from his insistence that the first task of a Conservative government will be to start cutting Britain's budget deficit. What we need, he told the CBI this week, is a decisive plan that starts now.

As Dominique-Strauss Kahn, the head of the IMF, noted this week, policy tightening should await a sustained recovery in private demand and entrenched financial stability. Britain has neither of those things. With the US looking fragile and European demand weak, there is the threat of a double-dip recession in 2010. What Cameron is proposing would turn that threat into a stone-cold certainty.

So, we have Tory complacency, the wrong economic policy coupled with Cameron's lack of judgement in the Commons yesterday.

If Cameron is not careful, that famous Ming vase could well start slipping from his grasp.  What he should be doing is smiling, nodding and saying very little.

The ‘heir to Blair’ still has much to learn.