Cameron: ‘What you need is thoughtful radicalism’

Lord Mandelson is outside David Cameron’s office when I go in for my interview. Not in person, alas, but boxed in a small television set giving his speech to the Labour party conference, to heckling from those gathered around it. A few days ago, the noble lord had suggested he would serve in a Tory government, and Mr Cameron has already thought of a role. ‘He can chair a truth and reconciliation commission on New Labour,’ he says, laughing. ‘I think that would be a very good opening job. Perhaps when he has done that and atoned for all his past sins, we could find him another.’

If Mr Cameron wins the election, he will have no shortage of very bad jobs to offer. His government will have a simple agenda: to enact the sharpest spending cuts attempted in modern British history. His mission at the Tory conference in Manchester next week is to be as honest as he can be about the pain in prospect, while — as he puts it — ‘saying much more than the government about dealing with the deficit, turning around our schools and how you reform welfare’. It will be a conference, he says, that will leave no one in any doubt about what he stands for.

Such doubts have, of course, been the main area of concern for the Conservatives. Gordon Brown’s phenomenal unpopularity will perhaps win them the election. But I ask Mr Cameron whether he thinks wavering voters know what they will get, should they vote Tory. ‘Not enough,’ he admits straight away. ‘I hope they will after this conference.’ His aim, he adds, is to convey a sense of mission, of purpose. ‘I don’t actually believe — particularly in the crisis that we face today — that you win people over by trying to design some specific retail offer to sell to each person on the doorstep.’