Cameron’s cutting talk will grab headlines from the government

David Cameron is speaking in the very room where Gordon Brown launched his uncontested leadership campaign in 2007.

He is announcing cuts in ministerial salaries, ministerial cars and MPs’ perks, like subsidised food and drink prices in the Palace of Westminster.

He believes he must do this to have credibility when he announces planned cuts in public spending.

As he puts it, this is about “taking the whole country with us”. It saves – he admits – a “pin prick” in terms of the deficit.

But once again he has an eye-catching, crowd-pleasing mini-announcement and is going to end up ahead of the government in most headlines on a day when the Chancellor is delivering a lecture about how the government is serious about “cutting costs” but not “cutting services”. It’s a lengthy addition to the recent government pronouncements preparing the way for announcements in the Pre-Budget Report which rob from one department to pay another – switching.

Not so eye-catching and not yet cooked enough to announce.