The psychology of this conference is like no other I’ve experienced. Having mastered walking, the Cameron Conservative Party believed it had a couple of years in which to get on top of this running business. No such luck. Gordon Brown’s very public toying with a snap election has compelled the party to unveil a larger tranche of hard policies than it had hoped to do at this stage of the electoral cycle.
So Michael Gove and George Osborne had to look this morning as if they were capable of being Schools Secretary and Chancellor respectively in a matter of days. It is to their immense credit that each (in my opinion) passed this test. To listen to Gove this morning—a debating master who wisely played it straight—was to hear someone self-evidently more than capable of running a big department.
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