Conservative conference: How David Cameron fought back against Ed Miliband

As the audience filed out of the Manchester Central conference hall after Ed Miliband’s speech last week, the question repeated over and over again was ‘well, what’s David Cameron going to do now?’ Though the Prime Minister’s aides were dismissive of suggestions that he should try to beat Miliband by memorising his speech and walking around the stage while delivering it (Paul Waugh notes in his email memo this morning that one spinner said ‘He’s Prime Minister, he doesn’t have days and days to practice and memorise a speech – like you do in Opposition’), the PM was clearly rattled enough to produce a speech which contained large sections of reaction.

The first passage on Labour attacked Miliband’s attempt to steal One Nation from the Tories:

‘We don’t look at the label on the tin; we look at what’s in it. Let me put that another way. We don’t preach about one nation but practise class war.