Conservative conference: David Cameron’s rally-style speech

This was one of David Cameron’s optimism speeches, a recession-era variant of his ‘let sunshine win the day’. It was pretty short of announcements, which is understandable given the lack of any good news. Instead he focused on essential optimism of the Conservative message: that this is a party which places faith in people, not in governments. And he wanted to spell out what that means, confronting Labour’s criticism of his party (and himself) head-on.

His speech was full of praise for ‘buccaneering’ Britain, a nation whose ability to take on the world was reflected in the Olympic medals table. That there is no problem we can’t solve, if we can persuade the Queen to parachute out of an aircraft to raise a laugh we can do anything. He is quite right, of course, but he didn’t quite say what his government would do to get off the back of the people.