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.
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