The more I think about David Cameron’s debate performance the more I think that the
problem with it was that it was too one-note. He said little that would make voters think of him as a different kind of Conservative. As with his 2008 conference speech, there was too much health and safety and not enough hope.
Cameron actually started the debate strongly, I thought his answers on immigration and crime were solid. But an example of what he didn’t do came when education came up. Cameron talked about excessive bureaucracy, discipline and government waste. Not once did he mention how he was going to let parents, teachers and voluntary groups set up schools funded by the state but free from state control and how this would give every parent the kind of choices in education that currently only the rich have. There was a real chance here for Cameron to show how the Tories were setting the intellectual debate and how they would make life better for people but he missed it.
When Cameron was pressed by reporters on why he didn’t talk about the whole big society agenda in the debate, he
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