Ditch big society 'bollocks', senior Tories tell Cameron

He had a big idea on Monday.

Put it in a manifesto on Tuesday.

Forgot to mention it on a debate on Thursday.

And so on Sunday and Monday he talked right it up.

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So quite a week for the "Big Society".

But just one week after the manifesto launch, senior colleagues have told David Cameron his big idea isn't worth bothering the electorate with, reports The Guardian.

But shadow ministers say the Letwin and Hilton approach is difficult to sell on the doorstep. "Oliver Letwin had this great 'big society' idea, though it might have been an idea to share it with the rest of us," one normally loyal shadow minister said. "People don't really follow Oliver's philosophical discourse."

Another shadow minister echoed this criticism. "The 'big society' needs to be turned into more practical voter friendly language. We need to turn Oliver Letwin's Hegelian dialectic into voter friendly stuff."

A third Tory source was even blunter. "The 'big society' is bollocks. It is boiled vegetables that have been cooked for three minutes too long. It tastes of nothing. What is it?"

Campaign anxiety seems to be generating some rather violent and vivid imagery about what would happen if the Tories failed to get into government:

One senior figure said: "The project is all about Dave. So if he succeeds it is about him. But if he fails it is about him."

The source was clear about what would happen if Labour and the Lib Dems formed a coalition in a hung parliament to push through electoral reform. "By then we would have murdered our leader and his head would be on a stake. The last week shows how thin our support was. There is no great enthusiasm for Cameron."