Will Guardian readers hold their noses and vote Tory?

Well! Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian was impressed by David Cameron’s conference speech and no mistake.

The campaign for 2015 has begun. On Wednesday, in what may well have been his sharpest, most effective speech since becoming prime minister, David Cameron fired the starting gun. In the process, he lodged at least a couple of deadly bullets into the flesh of his Labour opponents. The result – whatever the polls might say – is that after a fortnight of duelling party conferences, Cameron’s Conservative troops believe they are marching towards a contest in which they now hold the advantage.

That’s partly down to what the prime minister did in Birmingham. But it owes just as much to what Ed Miliband failed to do a week ago. Indeed, the two are intimately linked. For Cameron’s speech was like a finely glazed, elegantly decorated doughnut: it was constructed around a gaping hole, namely the gap left for him by the Labour leader last week.