Cameron – an act that’s wearing thin

I’ve got nothing against buskers – if they are good I usually give them some money – but I don’t think the office of Prime Minister should be filled by one. The job is more important than that.

The shambolic implosion of the UK’s position and status in Europe is probably the most embarrassing peacetime diplomatic episode of my lifetime. Insulting people that you claim are partners, revelling in talk of war and battles as you stand only a few feet from a first World War memorial at Ypres – these are not the actions of a serious politician. This is the posturing of a tetchy amateur, and not a very good amateur at that.

Forget attempted – bogus – comparisons with Mrs Thatcher. The point about her epic budget renegotiation at Fontainebleau in 1984 is that she got something substantial out of it. She stayed in the room and fought her corner with determination and persistence.

David Cameron certainly has a degree of charm, although as we found out on Friday it is not unlimited. We were also reminded that, when it comes to the difficult business of developing a sustainable policy in a complicated area, the PM often comes up short.

The truth is he has been busking it all along: from the neat little campaign speech that transformed his chances in the Tory leadership battle of 2005, to the husky and glacier photo ops that later became so much “green crap”, to the inheritance tax dodge (never enacted of course) that he cooked up with George Osborne in Blackpool in 2007, to the invention of something called the “Big Society” (which also failed to materialise), to the targets of deficit reduction that have never been met, to the “compassionate Conservatism” that gave us the bedroom tax and the glories of IDS at DWP, to the decision first to call suddenly for military action on Syria and then equally quickly rule it out, and finally the supposedly definitive Bloomberg speech on Europe that would settle the issue for his party and ditch Ukip. Right.

Cameron has ridden his luck and seized his moment. But it is not obvious what he has wanted to do with it. It has been a busker’s performance: intermittently convincing but without a real, lasting point to it.

Of course political leadership calls for improvisation and even opportunism. It is, or should be, part tactics and part strategy. But with Cameron it is all tactics and virtually no strategy. Why fall out with the LibDems over constituency boundary changes and Lords reform when the resulting inaction has played into Labour’s hands? Why, in fact, oppose voting reform so aggressively when a more proportional system might be the best way the Conservatives have of staying in power?

Cameron is not stupid. He got a First at Oxford you know! But that university’s tutorial (and examination) system could have been designed for buskers. If you can just get through reading out your essay and dealing with a few questions on it you will have survived for another day. Your “expertise” on any subject only has to last for an hour or so. You even have to put on fancy dress to take the exams. It is a busker’s paradise.

It is often said that Cameron is “prime ministerial”, that he “looks the part”. On the surface that may be true. The problem is that, under the surface, there does not appear to be a great deal of substance there. “There is nothing complicated about me,” he admitted to the Tory party conference a few years ago. When he was asked in 2009 why he wanted to be prime minister he said it was because he thought he would be good at it. There was no real purpose, no goal, no meaningful desire beyond the satisfaction of his own personal ambition.

We have just over 10 months of this to put up with: drift, rhetoric, poses but no purpose. When this busker finally passes round the hat on May 7^th next year I think he is going to be disappointed by the response. A good thing, really, that he doesn’t need the money.

Stefan Stern is Contributing Editor of LabourList