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Whether Cameron was giving an honest answer to a straight question, or whether he had decided to head off speculation about his retirement after an EU referendum (if he wins in May) or whether he shot his mouth off without thinking, is now beside the point. He has thrown the whole Tory election campaign off the rails. Nobody is sure that it can be got back on track, although politics being what it is, there is still everything to play for.
Unfortunately he is the victim of his own idea to legislate into existence fixed term parliaments, when the whole evolved system depended on the very flexibility he has now closed down. This is because the UK has a parliamentary democracy using the powers of an absolute monarchy with only one elected chamber functioning under a regime of tension between the executive and the legislature. A fundamental feature was the power of the prime minister to go to the country for a mandate whenever he judged the moment right, either because the government was riding the crest of the wave of public opinion or because it had lost a vote of confidence. Now and again prime ministers carried on until the maximum five years was reached and quietly left to be defeated in the election which followed.
The reason for these arrangements are complex and confused, but they have to do with the fact that the government is the Queen’s but the members of it have to come from parliament which is charged both with holding it to account and enacting its legislation. The uncertainty of the prime minister’s intentions acts as the catalyst which gives the whole process form. The fixed term parliament has not really worked and it is clear it should have gone a year ago, or at the latest in the autumn of 2014 and the fixed nature is at odds with the absolute flexibility of the constitution in general. A fixed piece of a flexible whole is usually a fault requiring repair in any system or mechanism.
This whole episode, based on a harmless remark underlines this. We either have to go back to all the uncertainties and flexibilities of our fabled unwritten constitution, or we have to have a proper written one, approved by the people, by which rules government is carried out. Meanwhile the consensus among those who profess to know is that Cameron has shot the whole Tory party in the foot. We shall see.
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The news that the little boy whose parents were put through hell when trying to organise his treatment has made such good progress and is now cancer free is wonderful. It vindicates the decision by his parents to fight for the treatment in which they had confidence, not because it was more effective than that offered by the notorious Southampton General, but because it has fewer side effects.
The story has, in its good outcome, profound lessons for all authorities who find themselves caught up in a medical dispute with parents of children with serious life threatening conditions. They are these. Doctors know a lot but they do not always know best. If medical hysteria replaces measured judgement and well intentioned discussion is replaced by threats, then the very medical authorities who see themselves as saviours instead unwittingly become heartless killers. I know. My family was stricken by the loss of the life of one of our children because we succumed to the threats issued by a medical grouping of which Southampton General was a part and whose flawed treatment proved needlessly fatal.