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IT Has been a Tory conference characterised primarily by sobriety, and while in his speech today Conservative leader David Cameron struck a more optimistic note, he was in serious mood. His measured tone was a conscious effort to counter Gordon Brown's jibe that this is "no time for a novice". It would be "arrogant", he said, to boast about what kind of Prime Minister he would be - "what matters more than experience is character and judgment". so instead he talked first of who he was and what his values are.
He returned again and again to his consistent message of mending Britain's broken society and broken politics. Behind this message lie classic Conservative themes of maintaining the individual's rights against the state, and of family and community. But the trick Mr Cameron had to pull off was to promise stability and solidity at the same time as change.
The Tories need to avoid appearing too partisan at a moment of national crisis. so he again emphasised his readiness to work with the Government on a bipartisan basis to solve the financial crisis - but made clear that it was for the short term. It is also necessary, he stressed, for people to remember Gordon Brown's leading role in creating the present economic situation - which he set out at some length. If Mr Cameron can establish in the public mind that Mr Brown is, at least in part, the cause, not the solution, of the present problems, he may yet counter the Prime Minister's argument that experience is what matters in difficult times.
That is the basis of his promise of change. He implictly compared his own courage and strength of character with that of Margaret Thatcher: she had been the right choice rather than the much more experienced but disastrous Jim Callaghan, he said, just as Mr Brown's undeniably greater experience of government was now not enough.
Mr Cameron sketched out, albeit in truncated form, how the Tories would handle the economy. He admitted that the Conservatives would inherit an economy "in a mess". Mr Cameron told his party that "I believe in low taxes": he promised to cut corporation tax by three pence. But he did not push the criticism of financiers that was so prominent in the shadow chancellor's speech any further: this was at least a pro-small business speech.
Ultimately Mr Cameron sought to identify himself with the prospects for national recovery; by extension, he wants to link Gordon Brown in public perception with the bad times from which people hope to emerge. He believes that "better times surely lie ahead" - "we can and we will come through," he promised. Mr Cameron's challenge now is to make voters feel that he has the judgment and the character, in his words, to carry the nation through hard times and beyond. On the basis of today's assured and confident performance, Mr Cameron has offered hope and a vision at a time when both seem in short supply.
Cut 2012 costs
Olympics executives have made a notable advance in their efforts to contain costs in one sport at least. Instead of spending £60 million on the basketball venue, they are hoping to reduce the cost to £12 million by importing a “flat-pack” stadium — a basic steel structure — from Switzerland. After the Games, it would be dismantled and sold off.
This is precisely the sort of imaginative thinking that we need to cut the ever-rising costs of the Olympics; let's have more of the same.
Culture splash
The first new centre for the performing arts since the Barbican opens today — the King's Place centre at King's Cross — with a remarkable festival. The centre, the creation of a public-spirited entrepreneur, Peter Millican, promises to transform what was formerly a bleak area for culture into one of London's liveliest artistic venues. We wish it well.
Reader views (4)
We are still paying for Mrs Thatcher's monetarist experiments. You only have to look at the Building Societies Bill she enacted in 1986 to encourage demutualisation, and the catastrophe that has caused. The privatisation of electricity, gas and water; we're all paying for that failed experiment too. The sale of council houses, so the Tories could reduce the rate support grant, and no longer be responsible for the repairs on dilapidated houses, which caused the huge increase in homelessness, and the enrichment of the bed and breakfast barons. Her meanness in removing the earnings related link to the retirement pension, which Labour have just renewed. Her destruction of the mining industry. John Major's petty last minute privatisation of the railways in the final days of his administration, and the huge cost to the taxpayer after another gigantic cockup by the Tories. Need I go on.
- Val Daniels, Mijas Costa. Spain, 02/10/2008 11:47
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The private pensions that went 'pear shaped' ... hmm, of course Gordon didn't have anything to do with it by raiding the pension funds for some 5 billion pa ....
Funny how, after 10 years of labour, the numpties still balme the Tories. Seem to have forgotten that Britain was fast becoming a third world country under Labour before Maggie sorted it.
Same story all over again, Labour mess it up, Tories sort out the mess....
- Sarit, Hong Kong, 02/10/2008 07:47
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If you go back to the first days of Thatcher's Government you will find that her Cabinet really enjoyed cutting Public spending and that each Cabinet Meeting started off with a round robin where each Minister announced what he intended to axe. Tory Conferences featured each Minister making jokes or singing songs about how bugets were to be cut. Not much niceness or concern for hard working families there. I fear we'll see a repeat as Cameron reverts to the same behaviour that made him write the 2005 Manifesto.
- Tom Brown, Brentford, 01/10/2008 16:56
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It was like being back in the late eighties with a smooth bloke trying to sell me a private pension which the Tories told us all to take out. Which all went pear shaped.
- Colin, Barking Essex, 01/10/2008 16:50
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