Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Brilliant Speech from Cameron

That ranked as one of the best political speeches I have ever heard. Simple in style, devoid of rhetorical flourishes, incisive in its diagnosis of what is wrong with our country and firm in its presentation of solutions.

Highlights for me:
  • Sound money, no debt binge under Cameron
  • Individual responsibility and responsiblity for professionals and organisations outside of Whitehall
  • An end to the health and safety culture though specific legislation
  • 3p off Corporation Tax
  • Calling on the government not to appeal the High Court decision on the Gurkhas, huge cheer from the floor on this one
  • All Conservative Euro MPs to sign up to transparency of expenses, or they stop being Conservative Euro MPs
  • Tackling parliamentary sleaze
  • Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty
He told a story that perfectly illustrated the gulf between the Labour Party's inflated view of their own virtue and the grim reality. A man whose wife died under appalling circumstances in a hospital received a letter from Alan Johnson via David Cameron's office. It was read out and it was a ghastly example of apparatchik, bureaucratic Labour doublespeak that summed up exactly what was wrong with Labour in government. This to a widower. You just wanted something very bad to happen to the heartless scumbag who composed it and to the Minister who let things like that go on in their department. The sooner both are gone the better.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you mean great speech!?! It was dull , uninspired and aimless.
Gordon Brown had the biggest conference bounce in more than 20 years by cutting a lead of 20 down to 10

The Guardian poll tomorrow shows the Cameron conference bounce was a mighty .... [cue drum roll] ... ONE per cent!


If that's what Cameron does, we'll have more of the same please!

Steve Horgan said...

Your stats are a little dodgy there Alan, comparing best poll to worst poll in order to calculate Gordon's improvement. No serious commentator, including the staff writers at every UK daily, agreed with your analysis. Cameron took Brown's narrative and killed it stone dead, and the first poll post-speech had the Conservatives increasing by 3 compared to Labour.

That's the fightback done then.