David Cameron forgot which soccer team he supports.  He always said it was Aston Villa.

But speaking in a factory in Birmingham, he said it was West Ham. It was an ad-lib. He “mis-spoke”. It was a “brain fade”.

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former PR advisor, blasted him: “Phoney. Believes nothing”. 

What he said to workers in Birmingham was: “our country is a shining example of a country where multiple identities work…where you can wear a hijab covered in poppies…where you can support Manchester United, the West Indies and Team GB at the same time”..Then he adlibs “of course I would rather you supported West Ham.”

Perhaps he felt that was just too flowery and he tried to lighten the touch.

I do not think he is a phoney. But I have watched clips of the speech. He looks down at his script too often. Then, when he tries to ad lib, it goes all wrong.

Cameron is clever, rich, privileged. Everyone knows that.

He wants to turn the UK into a smart, multi-racial global player, “the most successful multi-racial democracy on the planet”.

I see him and George Osborne as an island of competence. But it’s a small island, across from the mainland.

They are like the CEO and Finance Director of a large corporation .

Such people are OK with public speeches to business dinners and give carefully prepared answers at shareholders’ meetings.

But this is a noisy country waiting to bring down a public figure.

His party faithful felt they needed a “moderniser” but they don’t like him much. Diversity is not what the members talk about.

Round here the party faithful meet in old converted farmhouses. They turn up with a dog and a bottle of wine. Everyone talks at the same time. By the end of the evening they have come up with a new policy idea, like amalgamating police forces to make them more efficient or switching the foreign aid budget into defence to build an intervention force to tackle global disasters.

No necessarily bad ideas. They just don’t talk about the things he was talking about in Birmingham.

They don’t like David Cameron much but recognise he is smart, well-educated and hard-working, and hope he is going to win the party enough seats to avoid another coalition.

But I think it was a British politician who said: “For a party to fly it needs a left wing and a right wing.”