Is this the best there is?
There is, to be fair, more to be said in his defence, starting with the fact that it is hard to see anyone in Westminster obviously more up to his job. In its effort to peg back the spoiling, unaffordable welfare system bequeathed by Gordon Brown, Mr Cameron’s predecessor, who announced his retirement from Parliament on December 1st, his government has also performed a critical service. Its education reforms are bold and promising. In introducing gay marriage and smoothing adoptions, its social record reflects Mr Cameron’s liberal instincts, not his party’s nastier edge. His government has also shown that coalition rule, which Britons should get used to, works pretty well. That is a lot. Yet when the record of this strange, turbulent period in British politics is written, it will describe a Tory prime minister who rode the tempest, but could not make the weather. If that is the best Westminster can offer, it is disappointing.