David Cameron’s conference speech: my first reaction
Over on the Daily Telegraph live blog, they’ve picked up my initial reaction to today’s party conference speech from David Cameron:
In the run-up to Cameron’s speech the message from the Conservative Party conference was a very traditional one. Lower taxes, higher speed limits; fewer immigrants, more bin collections; smaller debt, bigger jail sentences. Yet Cameron’s speech was that of a different sort of Conservative – one happy to be in coalition with Nick Clegg, rather than railing against him, one happy to back military intervention to protect human rights, one happy to criticise Labour for failing to do more on the environment and one publicly backing gay marriage.
For a leader’s speech to be so out-of-tune with their own conference suggests something went badly wrong in the planning.
Good planning. Different audiences. Once the activists had been allowed to chew their red meat, DC told them what the party line is to outsiders…
Possibly that was the idea – but journalists and others were present at both parts of conference, and they mediate general coverage of the Tory party, so sending them mixed or conflicting messages ends up costing.
I have to agree with Matthew. The conference room was a quarter empty for DC's speech – and that's including press. Unlike the other leaders, this was a conference speech for the news reels. It said very little different to what Cameron has been saying for the last 12 months and there is nothing for the media to bite at in terms of coalition splits.
My guess is that for activists, the "feel" of the conference will have been one of traditional Conservative values – anti Human Rights Act, tough on crime, smaller government, lower taxes, don't care about climate change.
For those whose main exposure to conferences is the leader's speech, it will appear that it's business as usual.
On the whole, bad speech, good planning.
And what odds on the £250m bin money being part of the £800m local govt money.