The Spectator’s Notes | 6 October 2007

Blackpool

Such is the strange rhythm of politics that this turns out to be the most successful Conservative conference for many years. George Osborne, who only a week ago people kept telling me was a disaster, put in a commanding performance. His promise to lift the threshold of inheritance tax to £1 million did not provoke contempt for reverting to a ‘core vote’ strategy. Some say this is because, though not many pay the tax now, millions expect to one day. I suspect, too, that people actually like the idea that inheritance tax threatens them because the threat is a sort of status symbol. To say that you worry about it implies, without stating, that you have expectations, a concept beloved of the middle classes. My astute colleague George Jones also makes the point that Gordon Brown’s recent public appearance with Lady Thatcher may well have removed a big psychological reason for voting Labour.