He looks the part. He sounds the part. So what is it about David Cameron that makes him a less fearsome opponent than perhaps he should be?

There are plenty of attack lines that we like to believe about DC. He seems intellectually lightweight, incurious even, and sometimes astoundingly short on detail. He doesn’t seem to have any real beliefs or ideology and he rarely stands up well to interrogation. But these things can be hidden, even from himself, behind the pomp and the power, the celebrity and the blow-dried, well-suited veneer.

But last week on Uncut Dan Hodges articulated one of those truths that is both surprisingly new yet instantly recognisable: Cameron is a bottler.?? The child benefit row saw Cameron fail to withstand even a single day of rightwing criticism – something that his strategists will not just have been expecting but banking on, following their clever move to dare Labour’s new leader to defend benefits for the wealthy. (more…)