Mark Stuart: How Cameron the moderniser turned into a Prime Minister of pragmatism

No longer would the country be run from the centre: Labour’s “top-down, command and control” way of doing things would be abandoned, in favour of devolving power closer to the people.

Although Cameron failed to win an overall majority at the 2010 general election, his bold and generous decision to forge a coalition with the Liberal Democrats seemed the ultimate act of modernisation. Surely Cameron would go down in history as a reforming Prime Minister?

It hasn’t quite worked out like that. Cameron’s first year in office was dogged by repeated attempts to re-launch his nebulous Big Society concept on a bewildered public.

We were all encouraged to don our overalls, to pick litter on a voluntary basis, rather than paying someone else to do it. As the state shrunk, the hope was that we’d all rush to fill in the gap. Personally, I haven’t exactly seen a stampede of people volunteering their services: nobody has the time.

To be fair, the Government is devolving power downwards. In the next year, we will see referendums for elected mayors and police commissioners across the whole of England. Free schools are cropping up, no longer obstructed by the shackles of local authority control. In that sense, Cameron’s long-term reform legacy might very well end up being that he gave power away from Whitehall to those that know best – local communities.

However, Cameron’s plans to carry on where Blair left off in terms of public service reform have been stalled by Liberal Democrat opposition in both Houses of Parliament.

The “pause” in the Health and Social Care Bill last summer saw reform hit the buffers. Moreover, Cameron, who has identified his whole brand with the NHS, has had second thoughts. And thanks to a host of amendments in both Lords and Commons, the Health Bill is barely recogniSable from Andrew Lansley’s original proposal.

Ironically, the Government Minister most keen on pushing forward a radical reform agenda is Nick Clegg.

Having had his wings clipped over the failed AV referendum last May, the Deputy Prime Minister, in charge of constitutional reform, hopes he can secure an elected House of Lords. Good luck to him.

Given the scale of opposition in the Lords, and Cameron’s lukewarm support for the proposals, this is yet another part of the coalition’s reform agenda that is likely to find its way into the proverbial long grass.

In the absence of a reform agenda, the Prime Minister has instead transformed himself into a pragmatic populist. Having discovered that a weak Number 10 didn’t work, he has now surrounded himself with hard-nosed pollsters who have encouraged him to make a series of populist announcements that cost very little money.

Thus, voters have been promised an increase in the speed limit on motorways and changes to daylight saving hours, hardly the stuff of a reforming premier.

Whether by accident or by design, Cameron’s veto of the European Union Treaty in December marked the end of his claims to be a liberal Conservative. No longer can he claim that he is the Tories’ new face of moderation and modernisation.

In its place, we have “Bulldog Cameron”, winding up the Scottish Nationalists over an “in-out” referendum – a move sure to please his own mainly English supporters. Already, everything in Tory strategy is being geared up to fighting and winning an outright majority at the next general election. Pragmatism has won the day.

I’m left with the feeling that New Labour’s original attack on Cameron in opposition as a chameleon, too ready to change political colour to suit his political ends is an accurate one.

Cameron is therefore in real danger of simply being remembered as another consummate actor-politician in the mould of Tony Blair, as someone who failed to leave a legacy. But there is one last hope: welfare reform.

Here Cameron has a better chance of success. His Work and Pensions Minister, Iain Duncan Smith has worked extremely hard to implement the principle that no-one on benefits should receive more than the average working wage.

Politically, the Government’s reforms also make sense: the more cuts that Cameron can achieve in welfare expenditure, the fewer unpopular cuts he needs to make elsewhere.

More importantly, Cameron has public opinion on his side. Not since the days of Michael Foot have I seen Labour so humiliated in a Commons debate, as on February 1, when Tory MP after Tory MP stood up to claim, quite rightly, that their constituents were wholeheartedly behind these proposals. Meanwhile, Labour politicians, beaten and battered, slumped in their seats, realising they were on the wrong side of the argument.

So, Cameron will win his battle over welfare reform. His ministers have already invoked financial privilege to ensure that is has they have the upper hand in the battle with the House of Lords. As such, reform of the welfare system remains the Prime Minister’s best, and perhaps only hope of being remembered as a reformer.