Return of the Living Dead

Look at these faces. Get used to them. We're likely to see more a lot of them over the next five years.

This is the awkward squad. These are the people that John Major called 'bastards'. The unwhippable and unrepentant, the mavericks and malcontents of the Tory benches. They are - clockwise from top left - Jacob Rees-Mogg, Peter Bone, Zac Goldsmith, Bill Cash, David Davis, John Redwood, Philip Hollobone, Philip Davies, and Jesse Norman in the middle. David Cameron has a majority of ten. And here's nine of them.

Some of them - like Bill Cash and John Redwood - have been thorns in the Tory leadership side since the early nineties. (I was rather surprised to discover that Bill Cash was still alive, if I'm honest.) Most of them are in very safe Tory seats and were returned with increased majorities. Some, but not all, are rampant Eurosceptics (Bill Cash was the leading light behind the Maastricht rebellions of the early 1990s), but others have their own agendas. Zac Goldsmith has a solid record as an environmental campaigner (what will he think if Cameron slashes funding for wind farms and green energy supplies - a policy that the Lib Dems stopped him doing in the last parliament?). David Davis resigned and stood for re-election to draw attention to the erosion of civil liberties  (what will he think if Cameron pushes forward the Communications Data Bill - the 'snoopers' charter' that the Lib Dems also blocked in the last parliament?). Jacob Rees-Mogg has long campaigned for compulsory tweed and Latin in all secondary schools (okay, I made that one up).

This is going to be tough for Cameron. As in 1992-97, Cameron's majority will probably get thinner as MPs die or become embroiled in scandal or change allegiance. It will be easier for any rebelliously-minded backbencher to prevent a Bill passing, to force an amendment, to complicate and obstruct Cameron's legislative agenda. There'll be all sorts of three-dimensional chess going on, as the bastards decide to obstruct one piece of legislation in order to gain leverage over another. Cameron will be having to second-guess his backbenchers in a way he's never had to do before. In the Lib Dem Coalition he had a thumping majority, so he could ignore the malcontents, many of whom, clearly not understanding what coalition means, were infuriated that concessions were being made to the Liberal Democrats. But now they'll be on his back all the time.

The big nightmare for Cameron will be the EU Referendum. I don't think Cameron wants out of the EU. He is calculating that this is a chance to settle the issue for a generation; if the public votes to stay in, the eurosceptics in his own party and UKIP will, he thinks, have to shut up, at least for a while. But the risk has got to be (a) what if the public vote in favour of an exit? A recent poll suggests it's finely balanced - and with the right-wing press pressing their anti-EU (i.e. anti-regulation) message, it could be a tough one to secure (b) even if, somehow, Cameron gets a vote to stay in, will the party tear itself apart in the process? There could be some bloody exchanges in the next two years which would leave many backbenchers in no mood to support Cameron. (Think of the way the Lib Dems refused to agree boundary changes in their fury at how voting reform was handled - and multiply that by a thousand.)

But ultimately this isn't just Cameron's nightmare; it's ours. I've seen some leftish commentators consoling themselves about Thursday's result by looking forward to Cameron struggling through this parliament the way Major struggled through his. But this is not something to look forward to, for three reasons.

First, actually paralysis in policy-making is good for no one. What if we get the backbench equivalent of the US Government shutdown of October 2013? Second, the real nightmare is that Cameron is likely to have to buy off his rebels by adding selected policies of theirs to his legislative programme. What if Philip Hollobone decides that the price for his vote is a ban on the burqa? What if Philip Davies decides that he'll support a budget only if the minimum wage no longer applies to the disabled? What if Jacob Rees-Mogg does make tweed compulsory in our schools? (Okay, I made that one up again.)

But third, given how unstable his majority is, Cameron may wish to come to an arrangement with MPs from other parties. But who could he turn to? I'm thinking the Lib Dems, whose seats the Tories were targeting even while they sat round the Cabinet table with them, will be too bruised to want to support their former partners. UKIP only have a single MP. Which pretty much leaves the Democratic Unionist Party and woe betide this country if the DUP have any say in national policy. It's a party whose Health Minister recently had to resign for claiming that gay parents were likely to abuse their children. It's a party whose members recently forced the National Trust to include references to creationism in its Giant's Causeway visitor centre. This is a party whose 'rising star' Paul Givan recently tried to introduce a Private Member's Bill to legally permit Christians to discriminate against homosexuals. What would they demand of Cameron in exchange for support?

In some ways this is the worst of all possible worlds. Cameron is a far-right Prime Minister in economic terms, but he's shown himself to be socially liberal in some respects (gay marriage, for instance). The situation he's in may give us an economically and socially extremist government. Be scared; be very scared.