Cameron baby name: I predict Lowenna

Today wasn’t a total surprise to the Camerons. As their holiday photo opportunity finished on Sunday, Samantha Cameron said “we’ve already tried to work out how long it takes to get to Truro.”

David Cameron has said he’s talking of going for a middle name for his new baby girl that is Cornish. I predict Lowenna. The local reporter on the scene asked if his wife was in a private room and he glided over that one.

The redecoration work on the No. 11 flat is not quite yet ready for the newly expanded family so I suspect the family will head for Chequers whenever mother and baby are discharged from hospital.

Nick Clegg may get a bit more time in the spotlight if the boss takes paternity leave. His team will be hoping that will give him some good moments of exposure which will allow him to remind his troops that he’s got some rewards for coalition.

But recent history suggests that the political significance of this moment will be negligible.

Tony Blair’s baby boy Leo, born in No. 10, was the first child to be born to an occupant since Lord John Russell (unless there were some unacknowledged children, of course).

We political reporters wondered at the time about the possible implications. There were a few cheery photos, a reinforced sense of relative youth perhaps, but nowt by way of long-lasting impact on the political weather.

Part of that is due to the pact with the press not to publish unauthorised snaps of senior political figures’ children -waiting around in Downing Street in the third Blair term, you might often see Leo Blair toddle out the front door of No. 10 but the snappers didn’t snap.

Part of it is because voters are getting used to their politicians getting a bit younger and babies “popping out”, as David Cameron put it, slightly later in married life.