Seems the PM got grumpy on the plane over to Japan. Talking to hacks about snooping laws, he’s fighting back on the indefensible:

“You’ve got to remember that this was agreed a national security council where sitting round the table was Chris Huhne, Nick Clegg, Ken Clarke – people from impeccable civil libertarian backgrounds. I think when people see the detail they will understand this is a very sensible way of keeping up with technology and not a snoopers’ charter. And I wouldn’t as Prime Minister sanction something that was.”

Hug ‘em close Dave.

Via Dan Knowles.

After a long couple of weeks getting it in the neck from almost every angle, it looks like Dave hit the pub with the Mrs. Not just any boozer, an expensive one in Belgravia where the drinks cost eight pounds and dinner won’t leave much change from a hundred. And it seems it didn’t go very well:

Sam & Dave last night having dinner/supper at the Pantechnicon Pub, Motcombe Street. Sam seemed to be giving him a hard time.—
Eye Spy MP (@eyespymp) April 05, 2012

Was the slow cooked Castle of Mey beef bavette, truffle potato, spinach & bone marrow jus not up to scratch? Or was it the eight point dip in Dave’s personal approval rating?

After a terrible couple of weeks of contempt and mocking, what does the government do? Throw in some BS of course. With £600 million found for the Big Society Bank, Cameron told a crowd at the London Stock Exchange:

“Change is always difficult. There are sceptics to convince, vested interests to overcome and arguments to be won… The top-down state controlled monoliths have failed. “

It sounds more like an attack on the Civil Service. With Steve Hilton departing tomorrow, the “sceptics” are now running the show…

In opposition the liberal Conservatives were hardline in opposing New Labour’s surveillance state. David Cameron gave speeches attacking it:

…stopping the state from exerting too much power over us demands another big change. This Government is running not just a control state, but a surveillance state. In 2007, Privacy International ranked Britain’s privacy protections joint 43rd out of 47 countries surveyed – with the worst record in Europe, and only marginally better than Russia and China. Faced with any problem, any crisis – given any excuse – Labour grasp for more information, pulling more and more people into the clutches of state data capture…  And the Government doesn’t want to stop with the basic information. They want the most complex, important, personal information there is… Scare tactics to herd more disempowered citizens into the clutches of officialdom, as people surrender more and more information about their lives, giving the state more and more power over their lives. If we want to stop the state controlling us, we must confront this surveillance state.

Dave’s government is now proposing to allow the security services to monitor every single email, Facebook status update, text and tweet. This is such an about turn, which will ramp up the surveillance state so much, that one wonders if it is deliberately being set out to be defeated. The Coalition Agreement promised “We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason”, libertarian Tories and the LibDem left will surely form a parliamentary coalition against it which a cynical opposition will surely join. The more Machiavellian-minded might suspect that the purpose of the proposal is for it to be dropped and thereby demonstrate that the government is listening to its backbenchers. Surely when we already have Google already monitoring everything, we hardly need the state to get in the game…

David Cameron the candidate said…

“If we want to stop the state controlling us, we must confront this surveillance state.”

It wouldn’t be a terrible week for Dave without his old chum David Davis weighing in. He’s told the BBC “look at the front bench. They see them, all very well turned out, well-fed, they look like they’re in a completely different world.” When asked whether the PM was out of tough Davis helpfully added “it’s an unfair allegation, but it works.” Finally he echoed what lots of Tories are thinking: what the hell is going on in Downing Street?

UPDATE: Here is the audio:

Guido understands that one of the more fiery witnesses due to appear at the Leveson Inquiry has been notified about their impending star turn. Rebekah Brooks is said to have been told on Tuesday that she will be on the stand at the very beginning of May. Though she will be severely hindered in what she can say due to ongoing police investigations, this could be very awkward for the Prime Minister…

How to end a perfect day of being called an out of touch toff? A spot of the game first invented in Badminton by the Duke of Beaufort of course:

The sun being in his eyes is not an excuse…

With Miliband and Balls twisting the knife by going to Greggs for lunch, Cameron’s claims to have had a pasty at Leeds station are looking increasingly dodgy:

West Cornwall Pasty store at Leeds station closed 31 March 2007—
JamesLyons (@MirrorJames) March 28, 2012

Network Rail tells me now NO pasty shops in Leeds station – Cornish Bakehouse stopped trading Mar 23 2012—
Emily Ashton (@elashton) March 28, 2012

It’s shaping out to be a terrible week. And it’s only Wednesday…

UPDATE: PM’s spokesman says “maybe it wasn’t even Leeds”.

An impeccable Cameroon source has got in contact to tell us that he was in the room when David Cameron was directly advising JCB Chairman Sir Anthony Bamford about the process of making a donation. Bamford has donated over £2.5 million in recent years and lent Cameron his helicopter many times. Last month Downing Street commissioned a report from him. Awkward.