Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A tonic to dispel doubt

If any CoffeeHousers have been feeling despondent about the Tores, I have the perfect tonic: Cameron’s YouTube video released today. In my News of the World column last week, I listed five messages I thought he should give. And he ticked all of them off – and then some. It was one of those biannual events: where Cameron gives a speech that he obviously wrote himself, and put a lot of energy into it. And the result is always great. Now, this may be a wavelength thing: some CoffeeHousers may see a whole load of cliches. But I see in here an agenda for change – plus some clever debating tactics.

He starts by doing what I’ve longed for the Tories to do: frame the debate. The choice presented to him, he says, was between going back to “the conservative comfort zones” of the right or ‘playing it safe and wait for Labour to screw up and win by default’. 

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