Tories becalmed: PM still on hols as second minister quits

Get a grip, Dave - this is not what Churchill meant when he said 'We shall fight them on the beaches'

David Cameron and his wife on holiday in Portugal
(Image credit: FRANCISCO LEONG/AFP/Getty Images)

David Cameron is due back in London in the next 24 hours to face attacks over his lack of grip over the crisis in Iraq, and his party's slide in the polls, while he's been holidaying in the Portuguese resort of Cascais. This was not what Churchill mean when he said "We shall fight them on the beaches".

The new Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, tried to show that the Cameron government was still on the ball by chairing a meeting of Cobra, the emergency planning committee, about the unfolding Iraqi disaster. But that show of strength was completely undermined when Mark Simmonds became the second Foreign Office minister (after Baroness Warsi) to quit the government in a week.

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is the pseudonym for a London-based political consultant who writes exclusively for The Week.co.uk.