Fraser emails in: I notice all the shadow cabinet on stage. This is part of their strategy to show the Tories are a team, where Labour is a one man Brown band. Cameron announces to us that he has no notes “so it might be a bit messy but it will be me”. Subtext ‘unlike that control freak brown, imagine him doing this eh?’ And I love the reference to Thatcher’s long march to freedom, a reference to the Nelson Mandela biography of the same name.
2:20pm Cameron is tying the party into the project; paying tribute to it for the increased number of women candidates, its campaigns on the environment and the like.
Sayeeda Warsi gets a generous name check.
Fraser writes: I don’t know why Cameron says “we’re not going to be lurching to the right” the phrase is coined by Brown to attack the Tories. It doesn’t deserve currency. My press gallery colleagues are scribbling furiously here. First time in many years we have done a leader’s speech without being given a script.
Audience clapping, laughing at his every joke, like parents anxiously watching their child at a nativity play. Well, kind of. But you can almost feel them willing him on.
2:25pm Here comes the attack on Brown. Some jokes about Shrum’s influence on it and then an attack on Brown for promising what he knows he can’t deliver.
Cameron explains how he will bring the ‘politics of belief’ and appeal to the 40% not the 4%
Great crack about Brown’s competition for six word definitions of Britishness: Stop wasting money on pointless gimmicks.
2:30pm Cameron is always strong when he’s talking common sense or explaining the modern world to a Tory audience. A few jokes about Facebook fall slightly flat. But this is good so far, a little Google zeitgeist perhaps but as long as this is the appetiser to the beef then he’s fine.
2:35 Cameron gave the best explanation yet for why he always talks about corporate social responsibility.
Strong section on education. Cameron is good talking about education because he sounds so reasonable.
Here’s Fraser’s latest: Like Osborne’s speech, he’s talking about the internet: myspace has 130m members and if it were a country would be the world’s tenth largest. This chimes with what the Cameroons talk a lot about privately: the information revolution has empowered the small person, given a hunger for power. And politics should reflect this. Sometimes Cameron talks about “politics 2.0”, a point that will be lost on 99.9% of the country. But I agree with his principles. Economic and social trends are moving right (ie more power to choose) so Labour is actually swimming against the tide. So I do agree there is an allegory between internet developments and politics. Not sure I’d make the point to a lay audience, though, too techy.
2:45 Here’s Fraser on education: “He has just hit what is, for me, the top issue. He has pledged a Swedish style voucher system for schools. Of course he’d never use the v word, but that’s precisely what it is. “We want to open up the state monopoly and allow new schools to start so we can bring the innovation, change and diversity of the private sector to the state sector… Simple regulatory regime, per capita funding and have new schools so we can really drive up standards”. For me, this policy is in itself worth voting Tory for. With £5,500 per head, the church groups and Montessori groups etc could set up schools in a year. This transformed Swedish education, seeing villages and inner cities set up schools of amazing quality. A tipping point is reached where competition, not state diktats, drive up standards. Labour works for the unions and LEAs, not for the parents. Only Tories can deliver this. For me, the policy of the year.
2:45 Almost Obama-esque in his emphasis on how the old politics is failing.
2:55pm “We will be the party of the family again.” He talks personally about the NHS, there is a lot of Cameron the man in this speech.
Here’s the latest from Fraser: “He has just grasped another nettle: Wisconsin style welfare reform. It is the “tough love” approach, perhaps the toughest task in politics and one shamefully shirked by Labour. He quoted the Wisconsin figure where the welfare roll fell 80%. Does he think the same could happen to Britain? The education policy is the best one from this conference, but welfare would be the toughest if they got into government. A big “if”, but one getting smaller with each passing chunk of this speech.
Good stuff on marriage. Once this stuck out as the sole radical Tory policy. Now it’s in rather good company.”Fraser on the press reaction: “What a pleasant contrast to Brown’s speech. The press pack are whispering approving things to each other. I sense a triumph being declared.
3:00pm Here comes the bit of the speech I was always going to like least, his trust the professionals mantra about the NHS. (Or producer capture as a cynic might call it.)
Fraser’s not impressed either: Okay, pass me the bucket. “trust our professions in the NHS”. I bet they are applauding this bit in the BMA. Tory health policy is a cop out, an “all power to the producer” slogan which belongs in the Kinnock era. Nothing Cameron has said on health has made me change my mind on this.”3:05pm Just about gets through the immigration business. Then moves straight to international security.
Accuses Brown of breaking the military covenant. Cameron’s delivery of these lines is so strong as he sounds as his calmest making his most explosive points.
We, apparently, should be realistic not utopian. He uses his dumb line about how you can’t drop democracy out of a plane at 40,000ft, he is sometimes Douglas Hurd’s successor in more ways than one. Buys into the Miliband Iraq bad, Afghanistan good analysis.
Fraser on immigration: “Oooh, an immigration passage. He will cap non-EU immigration. Not that this will make a blind bit of difference, when EU movement is unlimited. “I want the party to talk about this issue in a reasonable and humane way” he says. Talking about it at all is a start.
3:10 More from Fraser, “Given that Liam Fox (rightly) made such a fuss about Brown’s scant mention of the troops in his speech last week, Cameron knew he had to big them up now. Troop welfare is becoming a big part of the Tory proposition and Cam’s words on it drew a warm murmur of approval from the hall (the first I’ve heard, actually).”
3:15pm I’m fairly sold on the green agenda but even I think that calling global warming a “clear and present danger” is a little much.
Fraser on the delivery: “I guess the whole point of a noteless speech is that the delivery is far more sincere and fluent. The giant screens behind Cameron show he’s regaling us with a vast array of facial expressions. It looks convincing, and makes good television. What a difference from Brown.”
Fraser on the green agenda: “Here we go with this green rubbish, and he’s repeating that old canard about how often the Thames barrier has been used recently. Just Google this: it’s a symptom not of rising sea levels but the developing technology of the gateway. But interestingly, climate change is downgraded to a sub category under the “security” heading, not a thing in itself. He didn’t dwell on it.”
3:20pm Cameron is on his idea for national citizenship service. This is one of those issues where he really does come across as someone who believes emphatically what he is saying.
Latest from Fraser: “Okay, it is dragging on a bit now. We’ve heard all this boxing club civil society stuff before….”
3:25pm A personal wrap up passage. Then for the first time I’ve seen, a real flash of anger when he declares “we’ll fight and Britain will win.’ Then it’s standing ovation time.
Here are Fraser’s thoughts on the ending: Finally, the peroration. “I can’t give you a hard luck story…I went to a good school and I’m not embarrassed about that” huge applause! He didn’t expect or, I suspect, want that applause. It was as if the Tory party was saying Three cheers for Eton! Hip hip….
“You can get it if you really want it” says Cameron. I once shared s flat with a girl who had a seduction CD with that song as the first track.
Guido has just given me thumbs up sign. So it’s official, then, a triumph.
The last few minutes were superb. “We will fight Britain will win”….. And from my initial soundings the press loved it.
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