"BROKEBACK COALITION", Chortles The Leader Of The Tory Awkward Squad!

Oh dear, the Tory/Lib Dem coalition has only taken ten weeks to get to where John Major was during the "Bastardgate" affair.

Yesterday, in unguarded comments, David Davis (the man Cameron defeated in the 2005 Tory leadership campaign and self appointed leader of the Tory awkward squad) is reported to have approvingly repeated a description of the partnership between Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as "Brokeback Coalition", which he attributed to another senior Tory.

Davis made his remarks during a boozy private lunch with former colleagues from Tate & Lyle at the Boot & Flogger wine bar in Southwark on Thursday. Sounds like just the sort of place you would find Tories!

The MP was reportedly overheard saying that Lord Ashcroft, the ex-Conservative party deputy chairman, had referred to the government as "Brokeback Coalition" – a reference to the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain, about a gay relationship between two cowboys. Davis, whose remarks are disclosed in today's Financial Times, said he had been "misheard".

Lord Ashcroft, (the Tories billionaire donor and non-dom parliamentarian who duped wee Willie Hague into giving him a peerage) has been privately scathing about Cameron's general election campaign. He believes the Tory leader made a grave error in agreeing to take part in the television debates. He also shared the concerns of many frontbenchers that the main theme of the Tory election campaign – the "big society" – was too vague and was difficult to sell on the doorstep. Maybe that’s because it is such a load of old rubbish.

The FT went on to say that Davis, a former Europe minister, who recently led a successful rebellion against plans to make it more difficult for MPs to remove an unpopular government, was dismissive of Cameron's "big society". He reportedly called it "a Blairite dressing" for plans by the coalition to trim the state. But that’s what everybody else thinks as well isn’t it? Because that's what it is.

"The corollary of the big society is the smaller state. If you talk about the small state, people think you're Attila the Hun. If you talk about the big society, people think you're Mother Teresa."

Davis, who resigned from Cameron's shadow cabinet to lead a campaign against Labour plans for the detention of terror suspects without charge, told his audience he was enjoying his freedom on the backbenches.

George Osborne, the chancellor, was given faint praise. Davis said that a newspaper headline that read "Osborne delivers" should have said "Osborne promises" on the grounds that he has not delivered anything yet.

So it's not just the opposition parties that have the knives out for the coalition. Ex-grandees and erstwhile funders, it seems, also have it in for them.

With friends like these, who needs enemies?