Compassionate Cameron’s got the jitters – and fallen back on his Elf ‘n’ Safety Palins

By James Valentine

David Cameron navigates the political landscape rather like a pilot coming in to land – trimming here and there, a touch on the throttle when he’s dropping too quickly – but I wonder if he’s in danger of overshooting or crashing on the runway. The warm words of his recent Hugo Young lecture about poverty, for example, certainly seemed to be a reaction to George Osborne’s warnings about savage cuts in public expenditure.

His pronouncements today about reducing the “burden” of health and safety regulations come shortly after a couple of polls that show the Tory lead slipping, so perhaps that’s why he’s veering to the right again.

Health and safety – or in Daily Mail-speak, “Elf ‘n Safety” – is a favourite bugbear of the Tory tabloids. Because of it, they say, the country is going to the dogs: children can’t play any more; businesses are being strangled; it’s all because of Labour; and it’s probably down to the wicked EU.

And as with the EU, most of the scare stories about health and safety are nonsense – mere falsehoods repeated time and again by lazy journalists. The Health and Safety Executive has a handy “myths” section of its website and one of them – that schoolchildren are supposedly issued with goggles when they play with conkers – was cited as “evidence” by Cameron.

It’s a measure of his cynicism that Cameron has been reduced to this.

And it’s not going to get any easier for him over the next couple of weeks. Labour should get a reasonable press from Copenhagen, whereas Cameron will continue in his difficult navigation job.

It’s partly that Labour has the advantage of having Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown, who are both committed and able to understand all the technical stuff, whereas the Cons are relying on a wobbly Zac Goldsmith.

But it’s more than just that. The British Palins who rail against Elf ‘n Safety are probably the same people who regard climate change as a load of rubbish. So which is the real NewTory constituency and what should Cameron say to appeal to it?

That’s his problem, and I don’t think he knows himself.