Cameron's peculiar speech
Peter Hoskin 4:54pm
Ok, so that was a peculiar kind of speech from David Cameron –
neither wholly successful, nor wholly unsuccessful. In terms of its general tone, it was much as we expected: a dose of bitter realism about the public finances, lacquered over
with heavy optimism about what the country can be. But its content was more surprising, brave even. For this was the moment when the Big Society returned with a vengeance.
In truth, we haven't heard much in recent months about the idea that framed the Tories' election campaign. Coalition seemed to have displaced it from the Cameroonian lexicon, if not their thinking. But it made an early appearance in one of the most unconventional sections of Cameron's speech. Labour "don't deserve all the blame," he averred, before going onto say that we, the nation, "swallowed" their big statism, their handouts and their irresponsibility. You could almost hear the confusion in the conference hall, but you could see where Cameron was going with this: his grand theme of "responsibility". And sure enough, a few beats later, he praised the country's "spirit of activism" that can drag us through the worst. We mustn't rely on government, he said, but more on our own honest toil and pluck.
Many will question the wisdom of disinterring the theme that, some say, was to blame for the Tories' failure to win a majority. But, to my mind, there is some potency in it: an attractive cross-pollination of the conservative and liberal traditions. And, besides, there were even moments here when Cameron made the Big Society soar as it hasn't before. "I know the British people – they are not passengers, they are drivers," he said in a closing section that dwelt firmly on people power. And he finished with an urgent appeal: "So come on, let's pull together. Let's come together. Let's work together, in the national interest." He certainly doesn't lack enthusiasm for this idea, even if others do.
Elsewhere, Cameron was less convincing. The passage on welfare, for instance, made all the right noises – but they came out strangely muffled and muted. There was nothing to match the fiery brilliance of his stand on poverty and welfare dependency in last year's conference speech. Instead, we got a reference to that speech, and a recognition that Iain Duncan Smith had worked out how to solve the problems that were mentioned then. I do not think that Cameron lacks conviction on these matters – but, at times, that's how it sounded. Ditto on public service reform and even Afghanistan. All of the emotion and dazzle seemed to be reserved for passages on the Big Society.
In the end, it's hard to judge this one – and maybe that doesn't matter. This was an erratic, bold and idiosyncratic number from the Prime Minister. But the words barely matter beside the task of the Spending Review on 20 October.
Previous
Vulture
October 6th, 2010 5:03pm Report this commentFaux Conservative Cameron, more than most pols, is a fraud and a spiv and anyone who believes a word he says is in urgent need of medical assistance.
SUSAN HILL
October 6th, 2010 5:09pm Report this commentVulture. Do go away.
Verity
October 6th, 2010 5:11pm Report this commentWhat Vulture said. Doubled.
toco
October 6th, 2010 5:29pm Report this commentA thoughtful grown up performance from Cameron which is so refreshing after years of spin and deceit from Blair and Brown.We will overcome the financial mess left by Labour's profligate spending but the damage is such it will take a few years before we are back on the straight and narrow.
GeoffH
October 6th, 2010 5:35pm Report this comment"Vulture. Do go away."
Hear, hear.
Structured arguments with evidence are one thing but these mindless rants of Vulture, Verity, Rhoda Klapp and others (you know who you are) are just a waste of space.
Bloody Bill Brock
October 6th, 2010 5:37pm Report this commentAllow me to tell you how this will go down with the chattering classes Mr Hoskins. Were you to go on to UK Polling Report, the Labourites will be saying the speech was utter rubbish and the few remaining Tories will be saying it was outstanding. Some Liberals will quite like it, others will not. The great unwashed dont even know there is a conference on in Birmingham.
Braveheart
October 6th, 2010 5:41pm Report this comment"..an attractive cross-pollination of the conservative and liberal traditions. .."
Yes but ..
"who's cross pollinating whom?", as Stalin used to say...
Yosemite Sam
October 6th, 2010 5:42pm Report this commentIs the Speccy trying to be a candid friend to Cameron? If so, the headlines it uses are not in the least friendly. I watched the speech - I can say that Cameron did not 'stumble' into it; he was relaxed and conversational. Was it 'peculiar' in content, style or delivery? Not in my opinion. I do not like the Big Society idea, although I can see where he is trying to take it. But it is not peculiar - it is an idea. I may be proved wrong, and it might take off. Did he touch on all those things he needed to touch on? I thought yes he did. My two quibbles: it went on too long, and he could have mentioned John Major. But, on the whole, an excellent leader's speech.
cmp
October 6th, 2010 5:49pm Report this commentThe speech showed the coalition has the ideas and vision right now. In comparison, Labour appears vacuous and irrelevant.
mongoose
October 6th, 2010 5:50pm Report this comment"I do not doubt that Cameron lacks conviction on these matters"? More care needed with triple negatives.
Anne Wotana Kaye 1
October 6th, 2010 5:50pm Report this commentNeither very successful and yet neither completely a failure. That's our boy Caring Davie, that's why it was a hung parliament.
Trafalgar
October 6th, 2010 5:50pm Report this commentI'll judge the man by his actions Vulture.
Cameron and IDS have set in place the biggest assault on the welfare state in generations - so on that he's to the right of Thatcher and I applaud his efforts. But the Tories have cocked up this week by not sticking to their guns and ducking at the first sign of gunfire. They really need to grow some balls.
We have to get a grip on immigration too and I can't take seriously talk of a "big society" when this is hardly ever mentioned. A cap is a start. Kicking Cable out of the coalition would help.
Simone
October 6th, 2010 5:52pm Report this commentI was impressed. It made me realise just how much this government has achieved in 5 months. Maybe I had been expecting too much change too soon. It takes time.
When he listed the Labour failings, I could feel my anger rising. Suddenly I saw this new government as the only responsible option.
Shyster
October 6th, 2010 6:00pm Report this commentI rarely visit this site, but when time allows I like to look in and whenever I do this 'Vulture' character is here.
Is she/he one of the great unwashed?
Ian Walker
October 6th, 2010 6:23pm Report this commentWhatever your thoughts on the Big Society, at least Cameron appears to have a vision, and some conviction behind it.
The beginnings of the idea were there in his bid to become leader, and he asked the country to vote for him based on it.
Blair would have backed down in the face of mocking headlines, stifled into inaction by his spinners. Brown wouldn't have had an original idea in the first place.
So we have a Prime Minister with a vision that stretches beyond tomorrows headlines, and beyond the dip and curve of the country's finances.
Almost regardless of the idea, that's a good thing in itself.
John Bracewell
October 6th, 2010 6:23pm Report this commentI am not an out and out fan of Cameron but I thought his speech today was good. It took Labour to task in a way he has not done before, he listed the considerable number of things acieved in 5 months of government, there were jocular passages and he painted a vision of what the country could be like if we pull together. Not bad for a 52 minutes speech.
EC
October 6th, 2010 6:25pm Report this commentPete,
Yes, it was oddly structured and peculiar in parts. When you and David Blackburn sometimes become blushed with unseemly enthusiasm about the new boys' policy statements I always say "been there, lived through it, heard it all before." However I have never heard anything like this before. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.
General Zod
October 6th, 2010 6:40pm Report this commentVulture at least has an amusing turn of phrase.
Verity, on the other hand, is just a strident harpy with but one theme.
If the Conservastives had gone into the election with the right-wing agenda that those two would have wished, it would have been yet another conference in opposition. Elections are decided by a narrow band of about a million people. Those people are in the centre ground and reject the extremes.
Labour is making right now the mistake that Vulture and Verity would have the Tories make - pandering to its core vote. Doing so wil keep the fossils happy, but it will keep the party out of government.
emil
October 6th, 2010 6:56pm Report this commentGZ
Verity said many (nay many many) times in her own subtle way that she wanted another 5 years of Labour. But heck, that's easy to say when you don't even live in the UK.
RKing
October 6th, 2010 7:47pm Report this commentPerhaps Verity should move to North Korea she'll get all the state control she seems to want there!
Pete Hoskin
October 6th, 2010 8:27pm Report this commentmongoose: Thanks for spotting that. Corrected now.
Dog Snob
October 6th, 2010 8:48pm Report this commentBloody Bill Brock
Conference?
Birmingham?
Holly ......
October 6th, 2010 11:32pm Report this commentJust watched Glen Beck.
Repeated at 7am.
A must.
Bob Cat
October 7th, 2010 12:50am Report this commentYosemite Sam : "he could have mentioned John Major" - What ? As an example of where we've come from or as an example of where we are going ?
Frank P
October 7th, 2010 1:41am Report this commentEurope? Referendum? Leached sovereignty? Repeal of the iniquitous legislation of the past 13 + years? Immigration? Neather's revelations? Creeping (nay - rampant) Islamism?
Nuttink!
No, my apologies ... he did in fact mention Europe. Seems when he offered his opinion of Europe to Cleggover during their pre nuptials (he sniggered), the latter's response was, "It's worse than I thought!" (Whah, whah!)
Unfortunately Davey failed to explain to the conference (or the listening electorate) what his opinion was. Perhaps Nick should explain exactly what was 'worse than he thought'.
No, Nick?
Why?
Let's face it - we haven't got a Prime Minister anymore, we have a PR Chairman of an experimental wet conglomerate. We're in limbo for [?] years while the treasury taxes the fuck out of us via everything we earn, buy and use, in an effort to clear up the financial havoc caused by the treasonous fiscal, economic and foreign policies of the last thirteen years of an inimical administration working towards an internationalist socialist (crypto-Marxist) agenda.
In their place we now have a bunch of poncy girlie-men, all with voices an octave too high; with their soft, manicured wanking spanners on the levers of power for its own sake.
On Newsnight tonight, the two Jeremies mano e mano (heh, heh,heh) - Jeremy Hunt - the latest addition to the dictionary of Cockney rhyming slang, and Jeremy Paxo - who should have been stuffed and cased in glass years ago as a proto-typical specimen of leftist privileged pomposity, exemplified what is in store for the foreseeable future.
And if that didn't convince you that we are (to continue in the Lambeff vernacular) cattle trucked, then the BBC inspired spat between the egregious Tarzan and the odious little commie shit Ken Loathed immediately afterwards, surely must have driven you to the nearest bottle of the hard stuff?
Out of the frying pan, into the fire I'm afraid, happy campers.
FMOBB!!
Frank P
October 7th, 2010 1:44am Report this commentHolly ..
"Just watched Glenn Beck.
Repeated at 7am.
A must."
Yeah, but ....
David Bouvier
October 7th, 2010 9:29am Report this commentSooner or later, the commentators will start to realise that Cameron really means it about a strong active society and that he is making a profound attempt to thin out the oxygen of statism that we all breath (except Verity, who presumably is inhaling cocaine fumes).
The tedious tub-thumping anti-this, anti-that, "Continuity Conservatives" never actually express a positive vision of what their preferred society looks like - they just have a hit list of things to destroy.
If they did put up a vision it would most likley be either (a) a sterile libertarian vision where we tear everything down in order to try and renegotiate it in some ideologically pure way - which most people are not fussed about or (b) it will be a strong local society with active participation a la Cameron.
You don't change things by withering critique of the status quo, or going off into a Melanie Phillips "we are all going to die" kind of panic. You change things by developing a positive view of what you want to do, and pushing forwards.
Unlike his immediate predecessor he is showing signs of being in office to achive his chosen mission, rather than wanting office for its own sake, to nurse some emotional wound.
I hope that Cameron will make a big step in rolling back the state, not only from our economy, but from our hearts and minds.
Kennybhoy
October 7th, 2010 9:13pm Report this commentGeoffH opines.
".. mindless rants of Vulture, Verity, Rhoda Klapp and others (you know who you are) are just a waste of space."
Whether one agrees with her specific argument or no', Rhoda Klapp does not belong on this list. For the rest, aye weel. LOL!
Oh and by the way Maister H. It ill behoves one who falsely, and demonstrably so, accused another poster of insincerity to talk of "structured arguments with evidence".
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