The Wardman Wire

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. If the Conservative conference was threatening to be at best unmemorable and at worst a little damaging, David Cameron delighted the masses yesterday with the speech of a man who would be PM. Just four years ago Cameron was telling his party what he would do to the Conservatives if he was their leader; yesterday he told the nation what he would do if they elected them him as their Prime Minister.

Despite the rather worrying appearance of Bono and a seemingly themeless start to Cameron’s speech, it is very hard to fault the Tory leader’s ability to speak to an audience. While this was by no means his greatest oratory performance, it was perhaps his most significant. Rather like Osborne earlier in the week, it was very serious and stern – there were no jokes and few moments of light reflection.

Yet Cameron did somehow manage to sprinkle some vision, some hope, and some inspiration into the proceedings. Make no mistake, this was not Churchill, Obama, Lincoln or Luther King, it was not even Blair. But that hardly mattered, for far more importantly, this was not Gordon Brown.

David Cameron is fresh, he can make boring things like the economy sound mildly interesting and even more so, he puts it into words that the man and woman on the street can understand. So while he delivered little in the way of meat yesterday, he played to his and his party’s absolute greatest strength of all – David Cameron was himself. It something he finds so easy to do and it is because of this he has such appeal.

There are of course many questions that remain unanswered. He talked of his utopian vision for Europe, yet failed to say how on earth he thought he was going to get there and more pressingly what he would do with Lisbon; he spoke of his dislike for large government, yet criticised the government for not regulating the banks; he proudly introduced General Dannatt and spoke of his vision for Afghanistan, yet it is difficult to say how things would change.

Cameron touched on so many areas of policy, answered few questions and left many more open, introduced so many of his team that will have been largely faceless to the masses and talked for such a long time, that it really should not have worked at all. Yet it did. It unquestionable did. And while the speech did jump around a lot, it was the Martin Luther King inspired conclusion that will have really got the crowds and the media excited.

The rhetoric appeared to go from prose to poetry. Suddenly Cameron’s head was in the clouds and he could see things that Britain has not seen since 1997 when another polished speaker captured the minds of many. Finally David Cameron has a vision, it may not be a complete one, it may have many holes in it and many questions that are unanswered, but he was offering his vision.

Though most importantly of all, while the government looks old and tired and while his own party may not be able to inspire, David Cameron can get even the most cynical watcher to raise an eyebrow. It is a priceless attribute, one that just may well win him an election.