One of the games in local government – and other sectors – is to work out where the Government is heading on various policies – whether you like them or not. That is not always easy. My experience working at the heart of Whitehall suggests that people in the real world didn't hear or understand what we were saying and often misunderstood it. Some of the blame goes to a failure to read the runes and to ministers and civil servants not being clear in their own minds about what they were trying to do and then not expressing themselves clearly.

To be fair to David Cameron, in a least one area it would be wrong to say he is not being clear. In a speech given in early January to the charity, Family Action, he laid out his plans on social policy in what is starting to be referred to as his ‘life-chances' speech.