Welcome to the new austerity era, Mr Cameron

Fraser Nelson says that the Tory leader must not be tempted by a ‘safety first’ strategy at his conference in Birmingham. The global financial crisis has transformed the political context and left an opening for the Conservatives to promise true radicalism and to be proudly bold

The Labour party conference already had an apocalyptic aura without the preachers from the Plymouth Brethren gathering in Manchester to rub it in. But as they stood at the security entrance, quoting blood-curdling passages from Ezekiel at passing Cabinet members, the text certainly took on a new resonance. The Labour membership knows that the end is nigh, and is just about ready to pass into the afterlife of opposition. And what better leaving present to the Conservatives than a financial armageddon?

As little as a month ago, David Cameron thought his best strategic option was to say as little as possible during the Tory conference, which starts this weekend in Birmingham — but the scale of the global financial crisis has changed all that. Most paradigm shifts in politics are recognisable only in retrospect, but one can already say with some certainty that we have moved into a new era of austerity. The original Cameroon model was built on the assumption that growth would continue, and that the real fiscal question was how its ‘proceeds’ should be ‘shared’ between public spending and tax cuts over the economic cycle. Officially, this remains the aspiration. But it sounds pretty hollow now.

The yawning gap left by Gordon Brown at Labour’s conference — what, precisely, he will do to help those fearful of repossession, rising food prices or inflation — is a vacuum that the Tories should fill. Tactically, it may be tempting to keep quiet. Why, after all, get in the way of a fight between the British public and the most unpopular Labour party leader in history? Strategically, however, a series of new and urgent questions is facing Mr Cameron.