‘No new dawns, no immediate transformations. I’m a man with a plan, not a miracle cure’: in that line lay the key message at the heart of this astute speech, by a man who now deserves to be seen as the Prime Minister in waiting. Elected as the ‘sunshine’ leader in 2005, David Cameron said in the Symphony Hall today that he was ‘still optimistic because I have faith in human nature’. But this was the speech of an instinctive realist who knows that, if he becomes Prime Minister in the next year and a half, he will head a Government that will have to take some deeply unpopular decisions, very quickly. He said as much: ‘if we win we will inherit a huge deficit and an economy in a mess. We will need to do difficult and unpopular things for the long term good of the country. I know that. I’m ready for it’ and ‘So we will rein in government borrowing. You know what that means.’
There would be fresh review of ‘every spending programme’, a cull of quangos, an independent Office of Budget Responsibility, and (more vaguely) the savings from ‘reforming inefficient public services’. And, as I wrote in the Sunday Telegraph at the weekend, debt reduction will come before ‘tax cuts paid for by reckless borrowing’. This was Dave as fiscal conservative rather than supply side tax-cutter: he did not move an inch off the modernisers’ most sacred terrain.
There were flashes of the early Cameron – a ‘child of my time’ who declared in a wonderfully Blairesque sentence that ‘I get the modern world’. All the case studies – the couple at a Job Centre plus, the 18-year-old soldier in Afghanistan, the hairdresser who’s a single mum – made me recall vintage Blair, and were a reminder that this particular Tory takes a very successful Labour leader as his strategic role model.
But, to an extent that one would never have predicted a year ago, it was the Iron Lady who loomed over this afternoon’s proceedings. In her introductory remarks, the parliamentary candidate Louise Bagshawe gained huge applause when she paid tribute to Baroness Thatcher – as did Dave when, in a strong passage, he confronted Gordon Brown’s ‘novice’ line by presenting experience a potential liability: ‘Experience is the excuse of the incumbent over the ages. Experience is what they will always say when they try to stop change. In 1979, James Callaghan had been Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor before he became Prime Minister. He had plenty of experience. But thank God we swapped him for Margaret Thatcher’. And there was a sharp put-down to Blair in Cameron’s response to the former PM’s famous claim that ‘we live in a 24 hour media world’. Not so, said Deadly Serious Dave: ‘this is a country not a television channel’, he declared.
Surprises? The hat-tip to David Davis was unexpected and cheered those of us who would like to see him back on the front bench. The repeated patting of Samantha Cameron’s tummy made me wonder if she and her husband have some happy news to announce. There was next to nothing on greenery, although that was perhaps just a recognition of economic reality.
And it was that economic reality – the unforeseen global crisis that will be the great challenge for Cameron’s generation – that was the true author of this speech. No swashbuckling; no tricks; no walkie-talkie feats of memory. Just the careful, well-judged, sobre oratory of a man with victory in his grasp, but more convinced than ever that victory will bring with it a mighty burden.
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