The Speech David Cameron Should Give Next Week – Spectator Blogs

This post s out-sourced to the almost-always-brilliant Hopi Sen who, despite being an incorrigible Labourite, has written a speech for David Cameron to deliver at next week’s Tory conference that is almost certainly better than the speech the Prime Minister will actually give.

Among the many choice cuts:

Mr Miliband spoke of Disraeli’s speech in Manchester.

He spoke about it. I read it.

I understood then why he was inspired. It must have sounded oddly familiar to him.

Here is Disraeli on a dying radical government:

“Extravagance was being substituted for energy… The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy… their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh.”

Well, some things never change, I suppose.

Left wing governments end in extravagances, menaces and sighs. Then Conservatives are faced with the hard task of national reconstruction – and are savaged for their pains.

It’s always the way, I think. Tory traditions are praised, old Tory heroes beatified.