Cameron tries to break free from Labour’s poverty of thought

I doubt many headlines will come from David Cameron’s poverty speech in Euston today, but for those looking to see him wrestle his way out of Labour’s way of thinking and towards a Tory solution there was plenty to see.

Here’s the problem as I see it. Brown has long understood that metrics are power. He who chooses the yardstick wins the battle – and if he defined “poverty” as the number of people below the 60% median income, he can fake progress. For ten years, instead of tackling poverty, he has used the tax credit system to manipulate the results of this very specific target. And for ten years, the Tories have said nothing. Poverty, they figured, was Labour’s domain.

In his speech, Cameron broke free of this. He drew a distinction between the symptoms of poverty – lack of money – and the root causes. Brown chased the former, he said, and but only the Tories would combat the latter (education, families etc).