Jim Murphy’s tweeted verdict on David Cameron’s speech to the Tory conference seems accurate: Bits I saw seemed written by 4 different people in 4 different rooms and merged just in time to be fed into the autocue. Such is the fate of conference addresses and today’s was no different. This is a tired format in dire need of refreshing. A speech that was half as long but four times as concentrated would work better. Instead, there are the usual dreadful “jokes”, the usual attempt to cover far too much ground, the usual blather about British spirit or promise or greatness and the familiar flabby mess of a speech.
But a couple of things are clear and worth noting. David Cameron is more interested in social policy than economics. Much more interested. The passages on deficit reduction and economic growth were flat, dutiful and delivered without enthusiasm. Quite plainly such matters do not stir this Prime Minister. At a time of economic anxiety, even crisis, this might be considered a fault but there you have it. Then again, the government’s ability to truly influence these matters is limited.
The contrast with the sections on education, on welfare reform, on adoption, gay marriage and the scandal of children in care was dramatic. Here you saw Cameron angered, engaged and ethused in equal measure. These, plainly, are issues that matter most to him. All the other stuff – the bits about decline being a choice, about the British spirit, about why Labour should never be trusted again – was dull or trite; these other parts – the bits about society and decency and the rest of it – were the moments when Cameron seemed most alive, most impressive, most clearly Prime Ministerial. This was, in its best moments, a One Nation speech by a One Nation Tory Prime Minister.
To be honest, the rest of it has already faded from memory and it is true that these speeches matter less for Prime Ministers than they do for Leaders of the Opposition. But Cameron’s speech was a rebuke to anyone who dares consider him a “heartless” Tory, it pitched his tent on the centre-ground of British politics, insisting that the Conservatives, not Labour are the party for a classless, aspirational, worried Britain: We’re on your side and this is One Nation.
One other thing: Cameron did not mention Ed Miliband by name. Why bother? Why dignify the Labour leader by attackig him directly? Ed Who? Precisely. Here again Cameron used his Prime Ministerial pulpit to good effect. If it was, for the most part, a forgettable and sometimes even dire speech it had, in its best moments, something to say and that something was said well. A shame, then, it was surrounded by so much stuff that should have been cut. But that too is a feature of a played-out genre.
Comments