For a party still facing defeat at the next general election, the Conservatives left Blackpool feeling remarkably upbeat. ‘It’s the spirit of Gallipoli,’ said a veteran of William Hague’s election campaign. ‘They’re united against Brown,’ mused one shadow Cabinet member. Neither image is quite right. This was no deluded optimism, no awestruck reaction to David Cameron’s speech. The mood at the conference had changed long before he stood up on Wednesday. Something had gone badly right.
The week started with the party in a murderous mood, with talk at the candidates’ party centring on who would replace the evidently doomed Mr Cameron. He had focused too much on image, ran the draft postmortems, without explaining what a Conservative government would do. Parliamentary candidates complained they had no ammunition when they went on the doorsteps, that they would struggle to give a reason for people to vote Tory.
By Monday, it was clear that all this was to change. The same candidates can now say — for instance — that a vote for the Tories is a vote to raise the inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £1 million. This is a political masterstroke, addressing the heartfelt concerns of millions who spend much time thinking of ways to cut the taxman out of their will. The abolition of stamp duty under £250,000 is a gesture, but a welcome gesture nonetheless, aligning the party with the spirit of aspiration. And few will shed a tear for the 117,000 foreign workers with non-domicile status from whom the party is (rather optimistically) looking for the cash to balance the books.
Many of the policies which came out of this conference have yet to be picked up properly by the media. Take, for example, the welfare reform which Mr Cameron almost casually announced.
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