Trevor Salmon: The best approach would be doing less, but in a rather better way

Published on Friday 3 September 2010 14:23

PEOPLE talk about the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, but the Tories are also a coalition. Not all Tories voted for David Cameron as leader and some in the party feel he had a bad General Election campaign.

Now we have Norman Tebbit and John Redwood making noises that Mr Cameron is going too far to appease the Lib Dems.

The honeymoon between the Tories and Lib Dems is over and they are now living together. Clearly there are some difficulties facing Mr Cameron, including the Andy Coulson issue.

Alastair Campbell famously said that when he became the story that it was time to leave. Andy Coulson can survive, but would probably not be able to if anything else damaging happened, or if there were any further revelations.

As far as the William Hague issue goes, we are talking about a very bright man. There's a question to ask about who gave him this advice about commenting on his private life.

While there's a degree of sympathy for him, - maybe he went over the top in what he said.

Up until recently a lot of the coalition coverage has been good, but we're starting to see a drip-drip of bad news. The question is how many drips can you have.

Someone, namely David Cameron, needs to take real control and make it clear who's really in charge.

Whether Mr Cameron has taken his eye off the ball by holding the baby or being on holiday is also a question that might be asked.

Mr Cameron has to get the basics right and rather than saying the government will be doing this and that - he should perhaps look at doing less in terms of announcements.

The best approach would be to concentrate on doing less, but doing it in a rather better way.

• Trevor Salmon is a professor of international relations at the University of Aberdeen.