TW
0

By Ray Fleming

MONDAY was National Health Service U-turn Day. Tuesday was Justice Department U-turn Day. Wednesday was Prime Minister's Questions so there was no time for a U-turn. What will today and tomorrow bring? The prime minister has clearly got the U-turn bit between his teeth and will not want to lose momentum. So will Defence Secretary Liam Fox be called in to hear that Mr Cameron wants him to order two new aircraft carriers for delivery as soon as possible?

George Osborne might find himself insisting that he has no Plan B for the economy only to be told that what the prime minister has in mind is Plan A (ii). William Hague could be asked to let Hillary Clinton know that Britain is having second thoughts about the Libyan adventure and would she please pass that on to the White House. That leaves only Nick Clegg among senior ministers and there's no shortage of U-turn potential in his responsibilities -- perhaps dropping House of Lords reform might make sense, after all it has resisted reform for a century so another year or two won't matter.

A flight of fancy? Perhaps. But Mr Cameron's upturning of his ministers' NHS and sentencing reforms was almost unprecedented and in Kenneth Clarke's case probably left a very senior and widely experienced minister feeling that he had been made a scapegoat.