Letter to a Loser

Dear Mr Cameron,

'We need a 'Kill Cameron' strategy' - Nadine Dorries, MP (Con)

'Boris Johnson Britain's most popular politician'

'Tories more popular after Black Wednesday than now'

'The start of a new Tory war?'

These are the headlines that the British have been waking up to for some time now. It is not, let's face it, either good or even normal. A very weak Labour opposition leader is sustaining, not reaching but sustaining, substantial opinion poll leads; the Chancellor is the subject of jokes:

'Why was George Osborne jeered by 80,000 people at the Olympics?'

'That's as many as the stadium could hold.'

So how did it come to this? It's not George Osborne's fault; it's yours.

You were voted a young leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, elected as a moderate, modern, refreshing change. You spent five years telling your party how it had to change, modernise, embrace the Green Revolution. Then you lost the easiest ever election in 2010, missing a wide open goal, against an unpopular, unpleasant and demonstrably incompetent Labour leader. Almost anyone could have won that.

The mistakes of your early years are easy to see. A political party consists of thousands of activists, unpaid and dedicated, giving up their days and evenings canvassing, filling meeting halls and flying the flag. You seem to have felt they were beneath you and insulted them, presenting yourself as modern at their expense. They felt hurt, mocked, and many did not bother to help at the election.

Instead of trying to run a minority government until the autumn of 2010, and, as was the tradition, holding fresh elections to confirm your mandate, you panicked and went into partnership with a party your supporters had been opposing at the election, thereby making them feel foolish and humiliated. You placed your career above your party and your country.

The Lib Dems had achieved some temporary popularity, almost entirely because of your idiot decision to allow them into the pre-election debates. It was ephemeral popularity but, negotiating at your weakest, you let them have dozens of ministerial positions on the back of it. Their popularity waned and they are having the last laugh. As you have made yourself increasingly unpopular, these equally unpopular intruders become increasingly indispensable.

And the LibDems acted as a brake on your government and on Tory beliefs. Your party thought it knew how to solve the economic crisis but couldn't put its policies into practice. And the newly elected MPs, natural Cameron supporters, found there were no government jobs for them because so many had to be given to the LibDems.

So now it looks as if you are going to lose the next election, even if you make it that far as Leader, condemning the country to another five years if the people who got us into this mess (Ed Milliband was a Treasury minister, Ed Balls was Gordon Brown's economic adviser).

Is there anything that can be done?

Yes.

Throughout your leadership of the Conservative Party you have stifled debate on Europe. It is one of the main topics of discontent in your party and you risk losing votes to the UK Independence Party. Now you have been thrown a lifeline by the unlikely figure of José Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission.

The only time as PM that you have been popular, Mr Cameron, has been when you vetoed a European treaty. You lost that popularity as soon as it was clear you didn't mean it and whilst initially vetoing the Eurozone's use of EU resources (such as civil servants) let them go ahead.

Barroso, in what he grandly calls a 'State of the Union address' has demanded new treaties, more Europe to counteract the problem of a failing Europe. It is stuff the UK cannot possibly agree to, and your supporters are waiting for some strong language from you. Incredibly, they are nervous that your response will not be robust. You must show, even at this late stage, that you have some sort of backbone.

Now is the time to renegotiate our entire relationship with Europe, from the absurdly expensive Common Agricultural Policy to the Working Time Directive which prevents the British working longer hours than the Greeks. There are rafts of directives, sub-treaties, accords and Brussels bluster that we want out of, and you need to renegotiate firmly and lead us into the next election with a vision; you need to show the country it has a future.

If you're not up to the job, someone else will do it.