Salma Yaqoob

There has been much in the media about the ConDem's first 100 days. Playwright David Hare eloquently and succinctly captures the sickly essence of what this government is all about.

'At the end of this decade, we hit a perfect storm. A financial crisis, precipitated by banking malpractice, coincided with the moment at which New Labour had diluted the principles of social democracy to a point where its founding ideals ceased to be recognisable. When organised finance and the public interest came into direct conflict, the left had neither an analysis nor a coherent plan beyond firefighting. Into this vacuum stepped David Cameron.

In one sense, he's a traditional blame-the-victim Thatcherite. But his special gift is to gild Thatcherism with piety: not just "do this", but "do this, it's good for you". Margaret Thatcher at least had the courage to despise the poor. Cameron befriends them by sticking hymn sheets in their hands while rifling their pockets. She adored the rhetoric of class war; he indulges the blokey pleasures of exhortation. He is a man who because he cannot imagine chooses instead to preach. Internationally, he is null.

Michael Forsyth was asked on Question Time whether the economic crisis wasn't providing visceral Thatcherites with the perfect cover to fulfil their dream of destroying the welfare state. "No, no," he said, "this is economics, not ideology." Cameron was asked whether, when the crisis was over, he planned to restore the familiar provisions of public service. He said not. Somewhere between the hypocrisy and the realism of these two irreconcilable positions lies the future of Cameronism.'