The Financial Times reports that David Davis, the one-time Conservative leadership candidate, has been caught deriding the Tory-Lib Dem alliance as the “Brokeback coalition”.
Overheard in a London wine bar (yep, file this one under: gossip), Davis approvingly repeated a comment originally made by the Tory donor Michael Ashcroft. The comment, which Davis claims was “misheard”, refers to Brokeback Mountain, the Oscar-winning film about a gay love affair — and reveals the extent to which Tory MPs on the right of the party are unhappy with the coalition arrangement.
Davis also described Cameron’s “big society” concept as a “Blairite dressing” for cuts to public services, and suggested that the Tory leader was more interested in keeping Lib Dem MPs happy than his own party. Davis has already led a successful rebellion against plans to make it harder for MPs to remove an unpopular government.
Ashcroft’s own views on Cameron are well known: he has openly criticised his election campaign for having been too vague.
In other news, the former Conservative minister Michael Portillo has suggested that the Tories and Lib Dems might fight the next election as a single force. Speaking yesterday on BBC1’s This Week, Portillo predicted that the two parties would campaign as “The Coalition”.
Mike Smithson at PoliticalBetting has the story — and suggests that such a strategy would benefit the party in marginal seats.
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