A debatable triumph

Last night I was at a Policy Exchange debate where I was proposing the motion that Cameron has changed the Tory party for good. They expected 40 guests, but had 300 applications so we moved to a larger venue. Why the crowd? Part of it is this strange, voracious appetite for debate in London right now reflected in the phenomenal success of the Spectator/Intelligence Squared debates. And part of it is the simple pulling power of the Gover. At the end of it, a queue formed to speak to Michael Gove, who was like me proposing the motion. He was on classic form, dividing leaders into fag-enders (Eden after Churchill, George Bush after Reagan) and agenda-setters (Thatcher, Clinton, Cameron). Cameron had “diverted deep currents” in the party, he said. I said he had reoriented it to the classic Tory mission: liberating people from state socialism. We won the motion on a show of hands, but only one bloke said he had changed his mind.