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David Cameron today set out to seal the deal with the British public by rejecting the comfort zone of easy promises.
“We could have come to Manchester and played it safe,” he was telling the Conservative conference this afternoon. “But that's not what this party is about — and it's not what I'm about.”
The Tory leader instead will warn of “painful” decisions to curb spending and “a steep climb ahead” as the nation wrestles with the economic slump.
But in a wide-ranging speech, he also was promising to back Britain's hard-workers and attack a “culture of irresponsibility” that failed to reward savers and the self-reliant.
Striking a deliberately optimistic note, he promised the country that better times were ahead. “Yes, there is a steep climb ahead. But I tell you this: the view from the summit will be worth it.”
The message that there will be lean years followed by years of plenty was reinforced by shadow Treasury chief secretary Philip Hammond in an interview with the Financial Times today.
He revealed that 20,000 jobs would go from Whitehall and quangos in cuts designed to reduce the £175 billion deficit. He predicted two years of “significant pain” but within five years Britain could be enjoying growth similar to that of the mid-Nineties when the economy surged ahead at an average 3.4 per cent a year.
Mr Hammond said: “If we are successful in stimulating economic growth, I think we can look forward within the lifetime of the next parliament to things looking distinctly brighter.”
In a draft section of Mr Cameron's speech released to the media in advance, the Tory leader said: “Don't get me wrong, I have no illusions. If we win this election, it is going to be tough.
“There will have to be cutbacks in public spending and that will be painful. We will need to confront Britain's culture of irresponsibility, and that will be hard to take for many people.
“And we will have to tear down Labour's big government bureaucracy ... ripping up its time-wasting, money-draining, responsibility-sapping nonsense. None of this will be easy. We will be tested. I will be tested. I'm ready for that. And so, I believe are the British people.”
Mr Cameron was not expected to set out detailed policies this afternoon, in deliberate contrast with Gordon Brown's speech of last week.
Instead his aim was to give voters a clear idea of his instincts and purpose, believing that many members of the public will, during economic uncertainty, vote for the leader they trust to make decisions about problems not yet encountered.
The Tory leader has in the past commented that voters are fed up with Labour but that he has yet to “seal the deal” for the Conservatives.
He will admit that many will not be “crying with delight” at George Osborne's stern warnings of a one-year freeze on public sector pay, multi-billion pound cuts in state spending and an increase in the retirement age to 66. He will say that the nation faces “massive debt, social breakdown, political disenchantment”.
But the first poll taken after Mr Osborne unveiled his austerity package showed the Tories increasing their lead over Labour to 14 points, with YouGov's daily tracker for Sky News putting the Conservatives on 43 per cent, (up two since Tuesday), Gordon Brown's party on 29 per cent (up one) and Liberal Democrats on 17 (down one).
In a key passage, Mr Cameron will argue that the Conservatives would seek to change the fabric of Britain with employment, tax and welfare reforms designed to reward hard-workers.
He will say: “I can look you in the eye and tell that in a Conservative Britain: if you put in the effort to bring in a wage, you will be better off; if you save money your whole life, you'll be rewarded; if you start your own business we'll be right behind you; if you want to raise a family, we'll support you; if you're frightened, we'll protect you; if you risk your safety to stop a crime, we'll stand by you; if you risk your life to fight for your country, we will honour you. Ask me what a Conservative government stands for and the answer is this: we will reward those who take responsibility and care for those who can't.”
He will also pledge to help the poorest and most vulnerable.
Reader views (27)
Well when we are all suffering from Tory austerity it will be uplifting when Dave gives us his weekly address from his mansion in Witney bought with a mortgage paid for by a grateful electorate. No food, no drink(as it will be made too expensive, no holidays as interest rates rise to combat the inflation caused by VAT at twenty five percent and no jobs. Thatcherism Mark II will share the pain out equally amongst the lower paid and pensioners.
- A Milne, Kensington England
A load of jargon! "Comfort zone of easy promises"? "Culture of irresponsibility"?? Steep climb ahead alright, trying to work out what that waffle was all about. I think I´ll stick with New Labour, even if it is looking a bit thread-bare at the moment.
- Graham Rodhouse, Helmond, Netherlands
El Del, Valencia Spain "hope they look back on all that Mrs Thatchers Government did and duplicate it where possible". I hope not.
- Dom, London
Keith Price. Still admiring Gordo and his crowd. Roosevelt's plan did not succeeed. Only joinining Britain to fight the War made US industries to focus on military supplies.
Just read the GCSE History exam paper questions, for example the June 2009 paper.
- Gary, London
Dave Cameron should have stuck to playing his tennis racquet , listening to the Smiths and admiring his reflection in the mirror.
- C Morgan, Kensington England
Keith, throughout history, the idea of spending one’s way out of a recession has been dismissed (including by Brown in 1997 and by Darling around a year ago). It’s one of the many flaws in Keynesian economics. And you now expect us to believe that Brown, the man who proclaimed the end of boom and bust now wants us to reject the Monetarist and Hayekian economics of Thatcher and Reagan which, in the space of a decade, increased the world’s wealth and standard of living several times over, and instead return to the inevitably cyclical theories of Mr Keynes?
BTW, what does this have to do with Cameron wanting British individuals to take responsibility for themselves instead of always expecting help whenever things get even a little bit hard and blaming everyone else for every misfortune?
- St, London
Right,let's get rid of all those public servants. The cost will be huge to the public purse as you need to pay them all redundancy. Who will be the ones to go? All the minions that actually keep the country ticking over, that's who. They will still recruit those at the top of the tree (the idiots who have no common sense and whose made a mess of this country for decades). If he is backing the 'hard workers' why does he keep pursecuting those of us born in the 1950's who actually got this country back on it's feet after WW2! Why doesn't he just cut to the chase and stop all social security for scroungers, children's allowance for the first two children only, that would save billions. By the way, I'm voting UKIP!
- Sue, Orpington, Kent
Where are your policies on immigration, and the EU,DAVE?
- Steve, England
whilst I think it’s great to hear that the Conservatives would tackle it head on, I remain completely and utterly flabbergasted that the New Labour Government has failed to even recognise the problem."
But labour's plan is a very respected plan, based on Keynesian economics, of investing in public services and public works during a recession, so as to increase demand. It worked under President Rooseveldt in the USA and it will work this time just as well. Cameron and Osbourne lack the insight to solve economuic problems. They have shot themselves in the foot this week, and only people selling champagne have benefitted from the conference
- Keith Price, Luton England
Looking forward to David Cameron & the Conservatives winning the election and to have proper leadership & policies in England again, hope they look back on all that Mrs Thatchers Government did and duplicate it where possible.
- El Del, Valencia Spain
Keith,
There are public services, and then there are public disservices. The former are things the medical staff in the NHS, the teachers in our schools, the people maintaining roads and railways and building new pieces of infrastructure that will last centuries. The latter are the paper-pushers who drain resources from the above into their own pocket and the managers whose sole aim in life is to increase their pay by employing as many minions as possible. They're a drain on the economy in good times. In bad times they're like millstones around our necks. Do you really think that it helps in a recession, to take the world's most complex tax code and make it even more complex? Or to inflict various forms of compulsory political correctness monitoring on our overworked doctors and teachers? Or to tie up struggling businesses with ever more tangles of red tape and regulation?
I hope that the Tories understand this. Labour have convinced me by their actions over the last few years that they don't.
- Nigel, London
Where are the Policies?? are haven't they thought of them yet?
- Mr Opinion, london
This is exactly the sort of thing a floating voter such as me has been waiting to hear for a long, long time.
As far as I can tell, New Labour’s great legacy will be a culture of blame, in which nobody is responsible for their own actions and any misfortunes can always be traced back to a potential defendant.
Cameron has astutely spotted this and identified it as being at the root cause of so many of society’s problems and whilst I think it’s great to hear that the Conservatives would tackle it head on, I remain completely and utterly flabbergasted that the New Labour Government has failed to even recognise the problem.
- St, London
Looks like the Loony Left have hi-jacked this blog.
- John Bull, London
I'm waiting for Noah to come and rescue us in his Arc... from the impending flood 
- Sanjay, Hounslow, UK
Looking forward to call me Dave's speech, another several hundred thousand votes fo UKIP.
- William Dently, London
Cameron is very rich, oily and not to be trusted. he also fails to grasp the basic sense of Ketnesian exonomics, which tells us that the last thing you do i a recession is cut public services, or you will increase unemploymeny and engineer a depression out of the present recession. he doesnt deserve to get elected
- Keith Price, Luton England
yeh, right Mr Cameron, Blah blah blah, that's all it ever is. What about policy, what about Europe, what about your seriously dodgy new right wing friends.
- Mike, London
Oh dear Blair, sorry, I mean Cameron's off again with his platitudes, when he grows a pair and starts showing a bit of backbone (not to mention thought) with regards to his policies then I might consider voting for him but until then it's UKIP as a pro-referendum protest .
- Bob, Cheam
Guess that means there will be no 150 a bottle of bubble sluged down at your conference,no bonuses paid to the stinking rich for doing their job,no more rediculous salaries paid while the working class slave away for peanuts.
- Dave, london
Labour obviously has a BPOM (Bottomless Pit Of Money) available to buy votes so I can't see why any cuts are necessary at all.
- Mike Newland, London, England
Politicians would be more convincing if they put up some business plans to back up their rhetoric.
Just think back, if you want a business loan from a ban you have to show what you will do with the money that you are requesting and this is not determined by a few promises. Hard details must be produced before you can touch a single Penney.
It is time that the political parties produced a project and business plan for the voters to consider before we let anybody spend OUR hard earned money.
We have seen time and time again backtracked promises and non-delivery, well now it is time for the creation of clear lines of responsibility by hard details showing costs and corresponding benefits and dis-benefits nailed to a spreadsheet.
We need and demand .XLS not .Doc(x)by all parties well before any election!
- James, City of London
Empty words. What precisely will he DO to cut down on the culture of irresponsibility? No details, as usual, just well-honed sound bites with no substance.
What about the culture of irresponsibly privatising the nation's assets, spending public money on tax cuts not on public investment, and allowing the building societies to demutualise and make themselves into high risk banks?
- Robert C, London UK
The Tories are offering nothing but cuts and patronising lectures on "responsibility". They have nothing to say whatsoever on how they actually plan to help British industry, nothing to say on foreign policy other than that they obviously hate Europe, nothing to say on reducing unemployment, nothing to say on housing and nothing to say on transport. I was thinking of voting for them before this conference, but they obviously haven't changed one bit since they were in power last time, so I'm certainly not going to vote for them now.
- Matt, London UK
Almost right Dave, start by attacking the culture of entitlement and embrace a culture of personal responsibility. The first is important because so many of societies woes at the moment can be traced to a sense that "I deserve more". The second is a direct response to a decade of nannying which means people just seem incapable or unwilling to take responsibility for their own safety, well being, anything in fact.
And while I'm dishing out advice, when are we going to see some big angry attacks on the current lot. I feel a genuine anger when ever I'm confronted with another example of Labour's incompetence, and I want to know that Dave and co feel that.
- Ian, london
What will he "not" promise us in his attempt to get elected, Dave is a very good speaker but do I trust him and his party to deliver his promises and at the moment I don't .I remember when his mate Boris was seeking his election as mayor he promised us everything we wanted.
- Mike M, Bedford England
I don't think he's correct, because once the pain starts to ease off, the sheeple will all be fooled by yet another bunch promising bread and circuses, led by yet another cheesy grin, and it'll all happen all over again. Those that down learn from history are doomed to repeat it as the real boom and bust is the British political classes normal mode of operation. They swing left and right like some metronome beating a private joke out on the populace.
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark
