Why does this Coalition wobble like a jelly at every whinge and wail from the Left?

NEW parents soon learn they must confront bad behaviour. There comes a time, when the baby booties are flying and the high-decibel wails are rising, that the toddler terrorists must be shown who is boss.

If you are dealing with twoyear olds, this is not too hard. I used to barricade the bedroom door shut and ignore the little beast until the screams abated to sobs.

With militant Left-wingers, such a stance is more testing — but no less essential. This is a lesson, alas, which Downing Street appears yet to grasp.

David Cameron, like many an earnest middle- class parent, set out on his premiership with soft intentions.

He was determined to be a model of liberal, loving tolerance (just like my CentreLeft-wing sister, who used to watch her infant son cause mayhem and then ask the nappied tyro, in the spirit of Socratic inquiry: ‘Why did you do that, Fergus? Please tell us what you hoped to achieve.’)

Labour’s bubble- blowing started soon after the 2010 election. It protested about Coalition policies on rape defendants’ anonymity, debt advice centres and free school milk.

Instead of telling the Opposition to get lost, the Cameron Government yielded to the protests. Ministers said this was ‘a listening Government’.

Controversy

After all those years of an immoveable Gordon Brown, it was, admittedly, rather refreshing. Mr Cameron loved to be liked.

The Left slowly discerned a trend: if it made enough of a fuss, the Coalition would collapse like a dodgy trestle table (particularly if pressure was applied to the Lib Dem end of the table).

School sports, coastguards, sentencing policies: on these, and in other areas, Whitehall was ordered to reconsider.

Ministers learned that Mr Cameron was more interested in consensus than a Thatcherite perseverance.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman made a clumsy attempt to reduce the sums wasted on public woodlands. A mad forest fire of controversy caught hold and she nearly lost her job. The policy was dropped.

With the student fee protests, things moved up a ratchet: violence on the streets of London, youngsters defacing war monuments. The Coalition wobbled. The policy just about survived, but Liberal Democrat MPS were badly spooked.

There was no Norman Teb-bit-style march towards the sound of gunfire. These lawmakers shrivelled. Their innards watered and Nick Clegg was told ‘never again’ by his yellow troops. Mr Cameron accommodates his critics, appoints them to public positions, strokes their vanities — and has repeatedly had his politeness thrown back in his face.

It happened first with his decision not to dislodge John Bercow from the Commons Speakership.

Vindictive

Moderate Mr Cameron, suffused with the endorphins of power, did not want to look ‘vindictive’ and told his Whips that Tory MPS should not manoeuvre against the Leftleaning Speaker when the new Commons first gathered.

Mr Bercow has proceeded ever since to make life difficult for the Prime Minister.

It happened at the Charity Commission ( whose boss Dame Suzy Leather has not been sacked), the Arts Council (where Left-wing snoot Dame Liz Forgan has been tolerated) and the BBC. Mr Cameron, doing the Establishment thing, appointed Tory wet Lord Patten to be BBC chairman. The BBC, overjoyed (amazed, even) not to have a firm Right- winger imposed, went on the attack.

The Corporation has shamelessly under-reported the euro crisis and over-reported the Murdoch hackgate row.

Look, too, at how it has whipped up recent controversies about the Health Bill and the so-called controversy over ‘slave labour’ back-to-work schemes. Amazing bias? Bias, certainly. But not amazing. It is all too predictable.

Britain, in its cultural citadel, still dresses to the Left. Whitehall, the BBC, town halls, the vast apparatus of officialdom: these remain overwhelmingly Left-wing — partly out of selfish job creation, partly because they are driven by a dated, dogmatic belief in egalitarianism. The Cameroons, moistly tolerant, are being comprehensively outmanoeuvred.

Mr Cameron stands up and endorses gay marriage, arguing that it is a good Tory position. I happen to agree with him, but I fear the broad mass of the Right is less convinced. Natural Tory supporters feel demoralised. They wonder why they bother.

The Right, being composed of individualists, is less good at organising itself. It is more ‘liberal’. Because it instinctively recoils from state institutions, it has fewer fellow travellers in the big institutions.

It is hopeless at capturing the big factories of culture, such as the Tate Gallery, the subsidised theatre, the opera houses. The failure of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to forge a distinct cultural identity for Cameron-ism is a really significant weakness.

The Left, meanwhile, angry to find itself out of office, is in a state of violent, juvenile rebellion. It can hardly believe its luck that we have such a mild-mannered Prime Minister.

Socially, I happen to like Mr Cameron. I would far rather have dinner with him than with Attila the Hun. But you have to concede that Attila ran a tighter ship. Strong leaders must be prepared to be feared.

Until now, you could dismiss all this as part of the warp and weft of politics in a developed, European economy. Yesterday, that changed.

The country’s leading trades unionist, Len Mccluskey, demanded a public campaign of ‘civic disobedience’ during the Olympic Games.

This takes things to a different level. The Labour Party’s top union paymaster is endorsing illegal protests. We are fast reaching the point when the tantrum needs to be brought under control. Mr Mccluskey and his comrades are not simply furious at the Government’s deficit reduction plans (mainly because their own livelihoods are threatened). It goes deeper than that. We are looking at a fight for the political soul of the country.

Mr Mccluskey scents an opening. He fancies his chances. He must be shown who is boss.

The Left does not yet accept its intellectual defeat. It holds up Mr Cameron’s failure to win a Conservative majority at the 2010 General Election and argues that though Gordon Brown’s Labour may have lost, Britain is still Left-wing.

Our parliamentary system did, indeed, deny the Tories an outright majority. But the Government savings are being introduced not just as a result of Tory and Lib Dem manifesto promises (Labour promised to make cuts, too).

They have been necessitated by a financial crisis that has become much clearer since the summer of 2010. There really is no alternative.

I would argue that the British people have moved to the Right since the 2010 election, significantly so in terms of Europe, immigration, welfare and deficit reduction. However, that shift is certainly not reflected in national politics.

Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the centre. To the left, write the issues on which Mr Cameron has retreated or on which he may have to make concessions. On the right of the line, write the issues on which Mr Cameron has imposed his view without any dilution of intentions.

The left-hand margin fills with at least the following: the Health Bill, welfare reforms, employment red tape, workfare, Europe, the extradition treaty with America, the ‘bonfire of the quangos’, the university access regulator, Abu Qatada.

And on the right side of the line? Libya.

The vested interests (in the health service and beyond) have not given up. If anything, they are becoming cockier.

Mr Cameron has only himself to blame. His charming but naive appeasement of the Left has only encouraged the likes of Mr Mccluskey to chance their arm.

Resistance

Mr Mccluskey made his outrageous threat to the Olympics not because he was scared of the Cameron regime. On the contrary, he and the Left think Mr Cameron and his Coalition are ‘gettable’.

They have been emboldened by Lord Leveson’s emasculation of Fleet Street, which has given much of the ‘ Tory press’ a nervous breakdown.

Are we in 1974 or 1982? In both years, a Conservative-led Government was encountering resistance from bitterly embedded special interests.

In the early Seventies, Prime Minister Edward Heath decided to hold a General Election on the basis of ‘who governs Britain?’ Not you, said a Britain exasperated by his lack of leadership.

In 1982, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in significant trouble until Argentina invaded the Falklands. Mrs T sent in the Task Force. A month later, victory was in the bag and she never looked back.

Is David Cameron a Heath or a Thatcher? On that question may rest the future of our country.