Tom Richmond: Labour is the only reason why David Cameron's luck has held this long

THE fog of complacency so clouding David Cameron and George Osborne's judgement '“ some call it arrogance '“ stems from the seismic political events of April 2006 when Labour lost the ability to govern.
David Cameron's response to the floods is an example of his slow-footedness and complacency.David Cameron's response to the floods is an example of his slow-footedness and complacency.
David Cameron's response to the floods is an example of his slow-footedness and complacency.

For the record, this was the month when Labour imploded following a succession of controversies from which the party has not recovered because of its subsequent lurch to the left.

As Labour was engulfed by “cash for honours” claims, it emerged 1,023 foreign criminals – including three murderers – had been released from prison without being deported by a Home Office no longer fit for purpose.

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The chain reaction didn’t end here – Patricia Hewitt was given a torrid time by the NHS unions, lurid details of John Prescott’s adultery emerged, Labour were pummelled in the local elections the following month and Mr Blair’s reshuffle – Margaret Beckett became Foreign Secretary – made matters worse because he was too weak to sack Gordon Brown.

Its time was up. The seductive charm of a starry-eyed Tony Blair in the 1990s had been replaced by sleaze, scandal and scant regard for the state of the public finances as economic catastrophe loomed on the horizon.

Why does this matter? Mr Cameron – and his increasingly bankrupt Chancellor – owe much of their longevity to Labour’s inability to recover from these setbacks and, of course, the fallout from the Iraq invasion. Labour blundered badly when Mr Brown was elected unopposed in 2007; it picked the wrong Miliband – Ed not David – in 2010 and then compounded this by electing the socialist Jeremy Corbyn last September.

No wonder disparaging Tories mock Mr Cameron as the luckiest post-war premier. Unlike John Major who was the unluckiest because he could not match Mr Blair’s charm offensive, Labour has become more unelectable with each passing leader, in a throwback to the Tories of the early 2000s.

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Yet, perversely, Mr Cameron and his Treasury sidekick only ever just do enough to survive as politics – and society – becomes more polarised.

In spite of Labour presiding over the worst financial crash since the Great Depression, and lumbering from one crisis to another, Mr Cameron only just did enough in the 2010 election to form a coalition government. It was the same in the knife-edge 2014 referendum on Scottish independence – Mr Cameron only just did enough to stem the tide of Nationalism.

The same with last year’s election. Even though the country had long concluded that Ed Miliband was not Prime Minister material, Mr Cameron only just did enough to secure a slim majority.

And, if Britain chooses to retain its membership of the European Union on June 23, it will not be with a resounding mandate – Mr Cameron will only just have done enough to scrape over the line.

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Like the infuriating student who does minimal study before surprising all on exam day, the Prime Minister is often at his best when under pressure – whether it be in TV debates or at PMQs.

Unfortunately this complacent mindset, coupled with a belief that the Tories are assured of victory in 2020 if Mr Corbyn remains at Labour’s helm, is impinging upon day-to-day policy-making. Despite being First Lord of the Treasury, Mr Cameron had clearly not scrutinised the content of last month’s Budget and, specifically, the proposed cuts in disability payments that now make his Chancellor unfit to hold high office after Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith’s dramatic resignation forced a u-turn.

His response to the winter floods was superficial PR and the Government’s inertia over the steel crisis smacks of Ministers still being asleep on the job six months after Redcar’s steelworks closed.

It’s the same with the NHS and the economy – Ministers have become complacent, and started believing their own PR guff, because they have already written Labour off. The result? More ill-conceived policy and now the row about the wealthy, including Mr Cameron’s late father Ian, squirrelling away their millions in offshore tax havens – a wheeze this Government promised to restrict.

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Just because Labour has still to win back the trust and confidence it lost 10 years ago does not mean that the rest of Britain should automatically settle for second best. If Mr Cameron wants to win the EU referendum – and lead Britain for the remainder of the decade – he needs to raise his game, have greater oversight over policy-making and start making a positive case for Britain remaining a member of the European Union.

If not, the Prime Minister faces the brutal prospect of being ousted, just one year after winning a general election, because he took his job, his office, his party and his country for granted once too often. After all, this is what happened 10 years ago when Labour started to lose the electoral plot.

If it had not done so, David Cameron might never have become Prime Minister, hence the need for the Tories to acknowledge that the biggest threat to their authority and credibility is, in fact, their own complacency rather than the Labour alternative.