The Tories’ great manifesto launch

Battersea Power Station is chosen as an allegory for Britain – “a building in need of rejuvenation in a country in need of rejuvenation” says David Cameron. As for Cameron’s speech – great stuff. He delivered the ‘empowerment’ message and gave hard examples, and wrapped it up into a greatest hits of his best soundbites (none the worse for that). It was so up our street that, at times, I thought he was working his way through the leader in the current edition of The Spectator. I’ll save my full verdict on Cameron’s speech and positioning for the magazine this week.  But here’s the rest of the launch.

The Tories went for an ensemble, with each of the Shadow Cabinet taking turns to read out the lines. The result was unusual, a political version of Starmaker, or Boyz II Men – although they didn’t quite hold hands at the end.