David Cameron needs to wear his heart on his sleeve

Underlying this week’s media mess on the government’s energy policy was a good intentioned pitch by David Cameron to his ‘strivers’: hard-working people who struggle to make ends meet. His speech at last week’s party conference was the launchpad for this new mission, and included the Prime Minister telling members that ‘it’s not enough to know our ideas are right – we’ve got to explain why they are compassionate too’. He knows he has a tough task ahead: polling earlier this month found 28 per cent of voters believe the Conservatives ‘don’t care enough about the very poor and vulnerable’.

Cameron introduced the compassion section of last week’s speech with these words:

‘This party has a heart but we don’t like wearing it on our sleeve. Conservatives think: let’s just get on with the job and help people and not bang on about it. It’s not our style. But there’s a problem with that.