By James Forsyth
Last updated at 2:22 PM on 2nd January 2011
David Cameron likes to compare the Coalition to a seesaw.
But his backbenchers are getting increasingly irritated at how the Government keeps shifting its weight down to the Lib Dem end to try to keep the thing in balance.
With the Lib Dems polling in single figures, Cameron has to help Nick Clegg demonstrate why it is worth his party's while to be in government.
Headache: Cameron and Clegg face a tough year keeping his coalition together
But every time he does that, Tory backbenchers – who feel taken for granted by their leader – begin to fret that the tail is wagging the dog.
Adding to this annoyance is a sense that Tory backbenchers are treated differently from Lib Dem ones.
Tories complain that the consequence for Simon Hughes of abstaining in the vote on tuition fees was that he became a Privy Counsellor and the Coalition's access advocate, while Tracey Crouch, a Tory backbencher who abstained, faced dire warnings about her future career prospects and lots of personal and unpleasant briefings against her.
There is already talk of two major rebellions in the New Year.
Soundings are being taken about who is the MP best placed to table and garner support for an amendment to the Government's European legislation demanding an in-or-out referendum on EU membership.
If this amendment were put down, it would cause a major headache for Cameron.
As he tries to keep his Coalition together, and get the economy growing again, the last thing he needs is a row over Europe.
Talk to Tory MPs privately and many of them like the idea of getting out of the European Union altogether.
Even those who don't actually want to leave are keen to register their objection to the Government's completely passive approach to the EU. This means that a fair few would be tempted by the chance to make clear the strength of feeling in the party on Europe.
But Cameron doesn't want to go near the European issue and knows that his Coalition partners, who are led by a former MEP, remain pro-European.
The other issue animating the Tory backbenchers is the idea of giving prisoners the vote.
The Government is proposing that all those serving fewer than four years in jail be allowed to cast a vote from prison.
Tory MPs hate this idea. One tells me: 'I can't think of a faster way to chuck away our reputation as the party of law and order.'
The Government's defence is that it has no choice, that it is being compelled to do this by the European Court of Human Rights. But this isn't true.
The court required the Government only to end the blanket ban on prisoners voting.
It was the Coalition's own choice to pick four years – rather than, say, one year – as the cut-off point.
One MP involved in organising opposition to the measure is confident that if the Coalition goes ahead with this plan, it will face its biggest rebellion so far.
The Prime Minister would be well advised not to test his backbenchers' loyalty over this measure. If he tries to force them to vote for it, he might find himself mugged by his own MPs.
Tory guru and Labour spin chief plan cosy party (until PM bans it)
The Oxfordshire home of David Cameron's strategy guru Steve Hilton and his partner Rachel Whetstone is fast turning into one of the great country retreats of the new political set.
The guest list is, as one would expect from the iconoclastic Hilton, not limited to Tories, ensuring vigorous debate. Guests sit up long into the night putting the world to rights, with Hilton always the last to bed.
New Year's Eve was to have been a typical Hilton house party.
He had invited Education Secretary Michael Gove and his wife and Ed Miliband's new spin doctor, Tom Baldwin, and his wife.
But the Prime Minister broke up the party.
First, the Goves came off the list as they were invited to see in the New Year at Chequers.
The Goves and the Camerons are particularly close through their wives.
Sarah Vine, Michael's wife, babysat little Florence Cameron during the PM's party conference speech.
Sarah and Samantha Cameron often head off on mini-breaks with the children when their husbands are busy politicking.
Then, when the Prime Minister learned that Baldwin was invited to Hilton's there was unhappiness in Downing Street.
The idea of Hilton seeing in the New Year with the Labour leader's new spin doctor was seen as ill-advised. So another name came off the guest list.
Some Tories are suspicious of how Hilton has so many friends outside the party. There are complaints that his friendship with Peter Mandelson's protege, Ben Wegg-Prosser, meant that the Dark Lord often had advance warning of what the Tories were planning to do during the Election campaign.
But Cameron relies on Hilton. He feels that he is the man who instinctively under-stands where he wants to take the country.
The Prime Minister has already restructured the Downing Street operation to increase Hilton's control of the policy process – and there is talk
of a broader shake-up that would increase Hilton's power even further.
Which is some compensation for the PM being the party pooper on New Year's Eve.
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When two young female reporters were wired up and sent out to try to trick Lib Dem Ministers into making indiscreet remarks about their Tory colleagues, there was one who couldn't be tempted: Sarah Teather.
Cynics have suggested that this is because Teather was rather less interested in impressing these young ladies than her male colleagues. But I suspect that the real reason has more to do with champagne and flowers.
At the Lib Dem Conference, Teather had to face councillors enraged at the Coalition's plan to set up schools free of local authority control.
She bravely, albeit unsuccessfully, opposed a conference motion calling for a boycott of these new schools.
When the defeated Teather returned to her conference hotel she found champagne and flowers.
Her Tory boss, Michael Gove, had sent them to her to thank her for her valiant efforts.
If more Tories looked after their Lib Dem junior Ministers like this, there'd be fewer
of them willing to sound off about their Tory colleagues.
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Both Downing Street and the Treasury are becoming increasingly worried about Andrew Lansley's proposed NHS reforms.
The Coalition's troubleshooters – Oliver Letwin and Danny Alexander – have been drafted in to work on them.
One particular concern is what happens if a GP spends all of their commissioning budget before the year is out.
Will non-urgent cases be turned away and told to come back next year?
The odd thing is that these reforms have been official Tory policy for years.
It seems no one at the top of the Party actually paid attention to the detail of what they were planning for the health service until they got into office.
Instead, they were just obsessed with the symbolism of promising always to increase the NHS's budget.
This shows just how intellectually destructive it is to believe that the only thing that matters is how much money you put into a service.
It is the kind of mistake you would expect from Gordon Brown, not David Cameron.
- James Forsyth is political editor of The Spectator
When a government ignores the wishes of their citizens we no longer have a democracy but a tyranny.
- Sue Smith, London, 02/1/2011 11:46
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