Theresa May appeared comfortable on the conference stage today for the first time. It wasn’t just her Dancing Queen entrance or her references to the various nightmares that beset last year’s address. It was also that she was able to defend what she was doing with real passion and conviction.
She also offered a good dissection of the Opposition, claiming that it wasn’t Labour but “the Jeremy Corbyn party”, and contrasting the approach of today’s frontbench with that of Labour’s greatest figures such as Attlee and Callaghan. Similarly, her section on national security didn’t just include her arguments in favour of the decisions she has taken over the past year, but also a glimpse into what it is like for her personally to have to take those decisions.
That personal touch was evident again in one of her main announcements, of a new Cancer Strategy. That new policy will aim to increase the early detection rate from one in two to three in four by 2028, and lowering the screening age for bowel cancer from 60 to 50. But May prefaced this with a story about losing her own goddaughter to the disease. This gave a sense of a personal drive that has been so lacking in previous speeches.
The Prime Minister’s second big announcement was designed to respond to Labour’s focus on those who feel left behind by the way the economy has been managed. She said:
‘The deficit is down, but achieving that has been painful. And our economy is growing, but some communities have been left behind. This is why some people still feel that our economy isn’t working for them. Our mission as Conservatives must be to show them that we can build an economy that does.’
She received excited applause for the policy she then unveiled, which was that the Tories will scrap the cap on local authority borrowing to build more homes. This is something the Treasury has been blocking for a while, and it has been cited as an example of the May government’s lack of ambition. It also helps local government, which is feeling very unloved at the moment.
But that’s not to say that this speech was a dramatic departure from the holding line approach that the Tories have taken this week. There were still notable omissions. Though the Prime Minister defended her Brexit negotiating position, she refrained from referring to it as ‘Chequers’, which has now become a toxic brand. She also veered away from a list of policy announcements on tackling her ‘burning injustices’, even though there is little evidence that her government has done much of this so far.
Along with the title of her speech, which was that Our Future Is In Our Hands, one of the key themes, which she drove home again in the peroration, was the need for the party to come together to seize the opportunity it has. The lack of unity in the Conservative party has seriously hampered the government’s ability to introduce the reforms needed to tackle those burning injustices. But May’s lack of confidence has arguably been a more powerful factor. Today, she suggested to the hall that she might just have won that confidence back
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