David Cameron has been steering the Tory hybrid vehicle down a very wide and green lane since he took over. Is he about to make a quick turn to the right?
The Conservative leader's willingness to throw his weight behind the Sun's campaign to do away with the Human Rights Act today is, at first glance, a little surprising.
His actual words are quite cautious: he says he will "scrap, reform or replace" the act unless the government can persuade errant governments to promise not to lock up and torture the criminals Britain deports back home.
Nonetheless, Tories with reasonable memories will remember that Michael Howard promised just the same thing during his "nasty" election campaign last year.
Mr Cameron's calculation is probably based on two pieces of intelligence. One is that the government may yet appeal against the high court's ruling that the nine Afghan plane hijackers have the right to stay in Britain.
As the Tories will no doubt point out, this amounts to an appeal against the legislation Labour itself introduced on a manifesto pledge. If they fail, Tony Blair may even try to tweak the Human Rights Act himself. The case of the Afghans may eventually prove to be a tipping point in the public's attitude towards the HRA.
Second, the act emanates from the European Convention on Human Rights. The Tory leader has already distanced himself from the party's small, ageing pro-European wing by promising to pull Conservative MEPs out of their coalition in the European parliament because it favours closer integration.
Rather than tackling the murky issue of how oppressive states treat returned asylum seekers head-on, Mr Cameron will probably argue that it is Britain's right to decide how to deal with offending foreigners on a case-by-case basis, and not Europe's.
The Tory leader can probably afford the odd lurch to the right, provided he keeps his eye firmly on the centre line.
But he will need to have a response ready when someone asks him exactly what he wants to "scrap, reform or replace" about the Human Rights Act, and how he intends to square it with Britain's commitment to the European Convention on Human Rights.
