Harold 'Supermac' Macmillan redux

With Stephen Hester pressured to decline his bonus and Fred Goodwin stripped of his knighthood, it has been a good few days for Ed Miliband.  Combined with an effective Commons performance on the issue of the latest EU manoeuvring, Mr Miliband is seeking to press home his advantage by demanding the government force banks to publish lists of all employees earning more than one million pounds.

This sounds bad for the Coalition but I think David Cameron is being canny.  While he lets Mr Miliband make the running now, no-one will remember this particular episode come election time in 2015 and thus Mr Cameron can make soothing sounds to the City so as not to frighten the horses (as he would see it).  Therefore, a public statement that the government will not interfere with future bankers’ bonuses (not that they did with Hester anyway) and then from the prime minister today that our financial institutions will not have to reveal their millionaire employees until other countries do the same (called kicking the issue into the long grass or after you, George). 

Moreover, on the topic of a new treaty within a treaty for the majority of European Union members, the greater the criticisms Mr Cameron’s EU-phobic backbenchers make of his efforts, the more moderate the prime minister appears to the general public.  Still by far and away the most popular politician in the country (something that when Tony Blair was in the same situation he misinterpreted as a presidential mandate), the Conservative party cannot afford to dispense with Mr Cameron  and he can play the long game as impressions are built up of him of the moderate whilst specific policies are forgotten.  The typical Eton -educated confidence of being born to govern does shine through.