This is the first conference since the election where the Tories won a majority and the first since Labour chose an unelectable leader. But, strikingly, George Osborne chose to use his speech to emphasise how the Tories must show the millions of working people who voted Labour in May that they ‘are on their side’.
Osborne is a man seized of the opportunity presented to the Tories by Labour’s lurch to the left. He has spent the last few days picking off several of Labour’s best ideas. His aim to make sure that when—or, should I say if—the Labour party attempts to return to the centre ground of British politics, it will find the Tories already camped there.
Osborne summed up his mission like this:
‘Do you know what the supporters of the new Labour leadership now call anyone who believes in strong national defence, a market economy, and the country living within its means? They call them Tories.
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