The government is falling apart and Cameron caused it.

The government is falling apart, day in day out new revelations appear. The slew of memoirs released at the weekend would have been deeply irritating for the PM and the inner sanctum. Then Frank Field fires an exocet at the government this morning in an interview. All this is against the backdrop of a collapse in economic confidence and the governments opinion ratings in freefall. David Cameron would be forgiven for thanking his lucky stars, that is if he wasn’t partially responsible.

Why do I say that Cameron is responsible? Well firstly the strategy that Cameron during the final years of Tony Blair was to deliberately hug the modernisers or Blairites extremely close. This was a deliberate attempt to split the Labour party, it was designed to force the incoming Brownites to tack away from the centre-ground. This was accompanied by Cameron simultaneously moving the Conservatives towards the looming gap in the market. Now that strategy has come to fruition as Brown moved slightly away from the Blairite inheritance and Cameron moved in to the centre. As the Conservatives rebounded in the Autumn and moved ahead in the polls it caused the split in Labour to widen as each side in the Labour party try to pull it in different directions.

Cameron now has the space to move to a new stage of his strategy, to map out the Conservative alternative and to exploit Labours continuing difficulties. I expect that Cameron will now project more gravitas and unveil more ideas as he uses the disintegration of Labour to stake out more of the Centre ground for the Conservatives and also seeks to put the next election totally beyond doubt. Make no mistake whilst some of the governments woes are self inflicted a lot of that is down to Cameron driving the wedge in whilst Blair was still in office and playing the Labour factions off against each other.