August 16, 2010. Copyright 2010, Graphic News. All rights reserved

David Cameron's first 100 days
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, August 16, Graphic News:  As if to make up for the faltering start for his government, Prime Minister David Cameron has appeared to race through his first 100 days in office with barely a sideways glance. He has taken a match to myriad Labour initiatives, but it's too soon to tell whether he is blazing a trail of his own.

Cameron's approval ratings have remained fairly steady. Many have warmed to his recurrent themes of coming down hard on the workshy, creating more choice in areas such as education and trimming the waste of the previous administration. Unsurprisingly for a former Eton schoolboy, he has looked and sounded prime ministerial enough, at ease with foreign leaders and assured in front of the cameras. With wife Samantha expecting their third child, no one has minded his short working days.

Yet nagging doubts remain. Some observers can't let go of the suspicion that Cameron's "Big Society" is just a ruse to justify sweeping cuts to public services. June's emergency budget from his Chancellor, George Osborne, has been criticised for targeting the most vulnerable and for taking money from women, in particular. The haste with which his government has set about dismantling some widely praised initiatives, such as Sure Start, has appeared unseemly if not downright rash.

It has been said that all Tory leaders are obsessed with living up to the examples of Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill. If that is so, Cameron might hope to make his mark with an overhaul of the welfare state so radical that it puts Mrs T in the shade. But, oddly for a leader whose policies are anything but hazy, there is a sense that it is still hard to pin down David Cameron the man, to figure out exactly what he stands for as opposed to what he stands against.

If its substance is elusive, the style of his premiership is becoming clear. He consults with few beyond an elite core of advisers. At face-to-face meetings with the public, he lacks the personal warmth and charm of Tony Blair. Cabinet aides have let slip that he lacks the grasp of detail that was so admired in his predecessor Gordon Brown. His ill-judged comment about Pakistan exporting terrorism showed an over-confidence that drew comparisons with (surely not) George W. Bush.

Cameron has largely coasted through his first few months but that may be about to change. He will soon face a Labour party invigorated by a new leader. Rumblings of discontentment within the ranks of junior partner, the Liberal Democrats, are likely to burst to the surface. But perhaps the biggest threat he'll face, as for Conservative leaders in the past, will come from within the ranks of his own party.
/ENDS