David Cameron is an essay crisis Prime Minister. He works best when his back is against the wall. And this conference he had a last-minute test set for him which he had to step up to. That test was set by the Labour party last week, with its focus on the cost of living, and Cameron passed it.
His speech was written with clever flourishes and turns of phrase – ‘the land of despair was Labour, but the land of hope is Tory’, ‘Abu Qatada had his very own May Day this year’ and ‘I’ve got a gesture of my own for Ed Balls’ – but it was also dominated by the Labour party. There were 25 references to Labour in the text of the speech. The Prime Minister tried to undermine Labour’s authority on areas it thinks it owns, such as the NHS, referencing the Mid-Staffs scandal, and saying:
‘Who allowed that to happen? Yes, it was Labour, and don’t you dare lecture anyone on the NHS again.’
And he argued that Labour had no authority to speak for the hardworking people that this conference apparently belongs to.
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