DAVID Cameron says he will be “resolute, practical and hard-headed”.

Spoken like a true PR man, sir, for that is what you are. He must be the happiest man in Britain – after Nick Clegg who could never have imagined he would be in any government outside The Municipality of Toytown.

Mr Cameron is happy as he has managed, through his strange alliance with the Liberal Democrats, to sideline his own Conservative Party. Why should he want to sideline his own? Because they are not really his own.

Mr Cameron has nothing in common with real Tories, such as David Davies, John Redwood and Lord Tebbit. He is only the latest in a long list of pretend Tories going back at least to my earliest political memories – to Rab Butler, Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath, Michael Heseltine and all the other wets, Europhiles and believers in managed decline.

Mr Cameron is happy as a sandboy with the Lib Dems because their ideas and policies are nearer to his own than those of true Conservatives – those whom we now have to regard as “Tory rebels”. And by signing up for next year’s referendum on Alternative Vote, “Dave” has prepared the way for a piece of electoral reform which could see real Tories out of government forever.

I suppose this is an example of his posture of being resolute, practical and hard-headed.

Meanwhile, true to his expertise in the business of PR, Dave is roaring around the world issuing sound-bites. He says Turkey, with its 70 million Muslims, should be allowed into the EU. He described Gaza as “a prison camp”

which, of course, it is. But he neglected to add that the guards in that camp are all from Hamas. He accuses Pakistan of backing terrorism while he supports the US policy of pouring billions of dollars into the hands of corrupt Pakistani leaders.

I do not see much resolution, practicality or hard-headedness in these vacillations.

But, if Dave is not just flexing his muscles to charm the girls and really wants to toughen up his act, I can help him by suggesting one thing he can do which will at once be of great benefit to everyone in Britain and demonstrate his credentials as a true Conservative.

My suggestion will not cost anything. In fact, it will save money. It will not involve the Prime Minister in any more devious alliances or produce diplomatic rows abroad.

This one supremely resolute, practical and hard-headed act would be to scrap the annual BBC licence fee. This is, to start with, a complete misnomer: it is not a fee, but a tax.

And it is no excuse, as Ebenezer Scrooge said, for picking a man’s pocket every year.

Our television set can receive about 1,000 channels and it is barely an exaggeration to say that 990 of them are rubbish. The BBC always defends its right to the licence “fee” by issuing sermons about “the importance of public service broadcasting”. If only! The reality is that most of the BBC channels are just as expert as their commercial rivals at churning out muck.

Why should we be taxed in order to pay for all those trashy, offensive, vulgar talk shows, pop programmes, sex and shopping and nut ‘n’ sluts exhibitions – to say nothing of the relentless barrage of political bias?

Let the BBC compete in the market with all the other channels and raise its own funding.

No political leader will ever scrap this tax though – his party would never again get a fair hearing on the Beeb.