The march to being elected has now begun: Cameron’s Conference Speech by Garbo
This was impressive to watch
I have to admit, I was expecting Cameron’s speech to be high on presentation but low on content. I was expecting to be writing a review that was going to give Labour a points victory over the Tories for the conference season. I was expecting Cameron to deliver a fluffy line on the economy and also forget everything else. I was wrong. I was very wrong. Today Cameron delivered the speech of his life and may have just driven the final nail in to Brown’s coffin. It was that impressive.
Hit the spot time and time again
Cameron ticked all the right boxes, got the tone spot on and answered his critics not with boastful arrogance, but measured purpose and poise. He tackled the economy and is spot on with assessment that “there will be a day of reckoning but today is not that day”. He tackled Afghanistan and the Ghurkhas, broken Britain, society and responsibility; he talked of promoting enterprise and low taxation and less state control. His words on the NHS were pressing buttons that no one has been able to do since Tony Blair way back in his march to power in the 1990s. He talked of schools and prisons, young offenders and education. He spoke passionately about welfare and social reform. In short he addressed every issue going and he did so with fervour.
Genuine passion
This passion was seen none more so than when he spoke of the NHS. When talking of the sad case of a man’s wife who had died from MSRA, the response he got from Alan Johnson was of complaints procedures. Cameron’s heartfelt response was “A Healthcare Commission. A Health Service Ombudsman. A Patient Advice and Liaison Service. An Independent Complaints Advocacy Service. Four ways to make a complaint but not one way for my constituent’s wife to die with dignity. We need to change all that.” It was a moment of passion so lacking in our tired government’s leadership.
Cameron is listening
Cameron’s speech will appeal to the tabloid press as well as the broadsheets. He tackled the over protecting society we now live in and the need for more support for our troops. The end to extravagant MP expenses and the John Lewis list. He promised a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Is was like he had made a note of every single grievance the public has had with politics over the past few years and tackled each one head on one by one.
Whether you believe him or not, he is saying the right things
Of course, the easy come back is that he made few commitments and it is one thing to make these statements but quite another to deliver on them. Yes you can be critical, but every time you vote in a new government you are taking a leap of faith – they can only deliver on their word if they are in government after all. What Cameron did today was show that he has listened to everything that has been said in minute detail. Whether you believe him or not is another matter, be at least what he is saying is on the money and that is more than his opposite number in the Labour has been able to show in the past twelve months.
The pressure is back on the government
The biggest criticism Cameron has had over the years is that he is all PR and not much else. Well today he really is starting to look like “a man with a plan”. This wasn’t “like me Dave”, this was heavyweight Cameron. Gordon Brown lifted some of the pressure off himself and his party last week. This week the pressure is right back on, more so than ever.
The march to No.10 has now begun
I spoke of Cameron completing phase one at the beginning of the week with his decontamination of the Tory brand. Well this speech was the start of phase two. The party still has a way to go, but the march to being electable is over. The march to being elected has now begun.
Categories: All WW, Party Conferences 2008, Politics Decoded, Tory
Interesting. My perception was more in line with the comments coming through from the conference Vox Pops on the radio - which were saying “boring, boring, boring”, “no policy”, “too long” etc.
I’ll relisten when I update the videos later.
The phrase all over the news is “Man with a Plan”, which is too close to “Man with a Van” for me.
Matt
There is the valid charge that the speech was too long - at 64 minutes it certainly didn’t need to be any longer. And there was the danger that he covered just too many areas. But I still think he pulled it off. And as you say, he got the soundbite in there too for those with a lesser attention span!
As for policy, I always think this is a bit of an unfar charge on Cameron. Yes his party is a bit policy light, but they do have policy and, we hope, they will have more by election time. It would have been nice to hear one or two more policy annoucements in the speech, but I think he did cover a number of policy areas and set out a direction in each of these at the very least.
I think setting the direction is what you want from these leadership speeches at conference rather than a full on policy manifesto. Did Brown’s speech have any morepolicy in it? Did Blair cover policy in detail in his conference speeches? Obama has the same charge made against him. The speech really would have been boring had he just read out a series of white papers.
In short - he gave the party a clear direction that he hasn’t done up to now and the next stage on the march to being elected is fattening out this direction with more policy. He also demonstrated that he knows what the electorate are thinking about very well indeed. I think he has set it up very nicely.
If a speech falls in Birmingham, does anybody hear? The Senate vote seemed to be higher on the news agenda. The danger with the length was that there were too many messages, and reading the text it looks like a speech that’s been composed on several different occasions.
The trouble with lack of concrete policies is that you can’t tell what the direction looks like: Cameron overloaded on his values, but we didn’t really see where that would take us, or whether he actually implemented them consistently.
He did score some clunking hits: but mainly on Miliband and Johnson. You’d almost think he wants to keep Brown as Labour leader!
david-keen’s last blog post..‘People Want to Know What Values You Bring’: Grave Dave Cameron’s Vision and Values
It does seem that the speech was overloaded for some - he did touch on so many different areas. That is what I liked about it though.
It seems the press commentators enjoyed the speech, with all the major papers being pretty positive about the speech, a lot more than the vox pops appear to show.
I think given the goings-on in Washington, Cameron did very well to get so much coverage.
I saw the speech as a starting point to getting out more policy - he showed us the areas he will be looking to change. And we do know more about what Cameron will do now than ever before. Maybe I am just more patient - too patient - on the policy front. I do not see why he needs to hand out detailed policy 18 months before an election. I am more interested in what he does put out makes sense and is good.
Unfortunately, the most eye catching policy for me was the transport stuff, which is utter nonsense!
As for whether he actually will implement them consistently we can not know until/if he becomes PM. A leap of faith will be needed to change to the Tories and I still do not think we are there - but yesterday was a significant step forward I think IF this is built on.