Reefs ahead as the PM maps out his new course The holidays are over, and the political circus is back in town. In Westminster, the air is thick with reshuffle rumours - who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out. There is excitable speculation that the Liberal Democrats could soon be doing some reshuffling of their own, with Vince Cable taking to the airwaves to assure the public that no, Nick Clegg is perfectly safe, and that their party's abysmal poll ratings are no more than the standard mid-term slide. To their credit, both Mr Cameron and his Chancellor, George Osborne, appear to understand the gravity of the situation. In a newspaper article yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke of taking the hard road over the easy path - of this nation becoming "a truly great Britain, equal to the challenges of the 21st century." He set out the Government's new priorities: a determination to push forward its reforms of welfare and education, to tilt the economy towards the private sector and away from the state, to create more fertile ground for aspiration and entrepreneurship, and to overhaul our dilapidated infrastructure (not least in the form of aviation expansion). He also pointed out some areas where ministers have already brought in significant reforms, such as university financing and state-sector pensions. If the Government can make real progress in the areas that Mr Cameron laid out, then the country will indeed benefit enormously. The question, however, is whether it will be able to maintain its focus, and its unity, long enough to push them through. Partly, that will depend on the nature of Mr Cameron's reshuffle. But it will also depend on his picking the right fights. There is, for example, widespread agreement that Britain needs more housing, especially in the South East, where the jobs are. But ministers appear to have learnt nothing from the furore over the National Planning Policy Framework: as Paul Goodman argues elsewhere on these pages, Mr Cameron's chosen approach is not just controversial, but needlessly antagonistic. The great virtue of a relaunch, it must be remembered, is that it offers a government the chance to avoid making the same mistakes.