The Special Relationship

May I commend to you Tim Montgomerie's article in the Weekly Standard on David Cameron's meeting with President Bush in Washington: Cameron's Conservatives? Tim notes:

Cameron's was the first visit by a Tory leader to America's capital city for six years. That's the longest absence since World War II. Those Americans who want long-term partners should realize the importance of the conservative party. It's not just because it is increasingly likely to form Britain's next government, but because the conservatives are the natural allies of an outward-looking America, and particularly of the GOP's worldview.

Making British Poverty History

Citing evidence from former leader Iain Duncan Smith's landmark reports Breakdown Britain and Breakthrough Britain, David Cameron has pledged that the next Conservative Government will "make British poverty history." However, he warns that "we need to make twentieth century welfare dependency history first."

He suggests that, despite good intentions, Gordon Brown has failed the country by focusing on top-down, mechanical state interventions instead of developing policies that focus on people — a flawed, one-dimensional approach that has resulted in almost five million people out of work and on benefits, almost four million people in problem debt, and over eight million people with alcohol and drug disorders.

He described a Conservative, holistic approach as one that would take into account the importance of families, communities and incentives to work:

"In place of Gordon Brown's misguided couple penalty, we will increase the Working Tax Credit that couples receive - bringing tax credits fully into line with the rest of the benefits system."

"Instead of the revolving door of people flitting in and out of benefits and work, we will draw on successful examples of welfare reform from all over the world to overhaul our welfare system. These are tailored to the individual, and they harness the private and voluntary sectors, rather than government bureaucracies, to help people get back into work."

Unfortunately, we really cannot afford to put off the radical welfare reform and the social changes that everyone knows we need for yet another two or three years until Mr Cameron becomes Prime Minister. So, let's hope that this new agenda will be the latest idea to be "stolen" by Gordon Brown...

Pick'n'mix Politics

Having forced the Conservatives to reveal some of their trump cards last week (in readiness for the election that never was), the Government is being accused after today's pre-budget report and comprehensive spending review statement of "stealing" Conservative and LibDem policies — notably, on raising the inheritance tax threshold for married couples and those in civil partnerships, on reforming aviation duty so it is paid per plane rather than per passenger, and on reviewing loopholes for non-domiciled tax payers. However, if all our elected representatives have our best interests in mind, then surely we want the Government of the day to draw upon the best ideas from across the political spectrum and it doesn't matter who gets to implement them?

Except that "pick'n'mix" politics is unlikely to result in a stable economy and strong society. In order to achieve that, one needs a coherent vision and clear objectives. Only once core values have been identified and principles and beliefs clearly defined, is anyone in a position to evaluate how effectively any given policy fits into the overall scheme for the nation and what contribution any particular set of policies might make towards stated goals.

So, if your vision recognises marriage and the family as a means of fostering strong local communities and family-based support networks, it makes sense to introduce transferable tax allowances between spouses — on income tax, not just inheritance tax. However, it would also make sense to exempt the main family home from inheritance tax — and makes no sense to have a conflicting tax credit system that penalises couples who want to get together or who are struggling financially and want to stay together!

The reason I supported David Cameron in the leadership contest two years ago is that, whenever he spoke, he appeared to be presenting an overall vision for the country rather than piecemeal policies. He has spent the last two years first defining the aims and values of his party (in "Built to Last") and then conducting wide-ranging policy reviews. Now that each of the policy groups has reported, the Conservative leader is in a position to evaluate their many proposals against his broader vision for society.

In contrast, Gordon Brown repeatedly tells us that he has a vision but has so far failed to tell us what that vision is, which begs the question as to whether he really has one — or even understands the need for one. Ultimately, it is this that means Labour's "plagiarism politics" will fail to transform the breakdown in society and the slowdown in the economy — and why, to coin a phrase, it is time for change. Sadly, it seems we're going to have to wait two or three years more until we are given the opportunity to effect that change.

Cameron Highlights

"While our economy is getting richer, our society is in many ways getting poorer."

I'm not sure that the economy is actually getting stronger - though Gordon Brown would like to convince us that it is - but David Cameron, picking up on what Iain "The Passionate Man" Duncan Smith said yesterday, is surely right that society is getting poorer. As he noted earlier in his speech, "We've got to make families stronger and society more responsible."

Yet, somehow I have yet to hear any politician make the crucial observation that would transform our whole approach to the challenges facing our country and our world. Namely, life is all about relationships. Family relationships, community relationships, corporate relationships, international relationships - everything we treasure most and everything that determines the opportunities available to us - revolves around relationships.

Yes, Britain is broken. Society needs mending. However, I think we have yet to grasp the full extent of the problem ... and, therefore, also of the solution.

Conference Diary - Sunday

Well, I finally made it to the sunny delights of Blackpool ... after spending 3 1/2 hours broken down on the M6 (not my car)! Like others, I applied for my conference pass back in July. Also like others, I have been phoning Fingerprint Events every day for the past week in order to find out why I still hadn't been accredited. Eventually, yesterday, somebody decided they ought to let me in after all and I didn't even have to queue for more than a couple of minutes today before being able to collect my pass, so there's no turning back now.

Before leaving home this morning, I did catch some of David Cameron's interview with Andrew Marr. Coming in as they were discussing the Conservatives' dramatic loss of strength in all the opinion polls over the past year, with Marr saying something about needing "to have an analysis of what you need to change and therefore what went wrong" in order to bring about change, I thought he was about to pick up the conference theme and ask Cameron whether it was "time for change" in the direction or even, if Marr was really unsympathetic, in the leadership of the Party. However, he let Cameron plough on to talk about crime and the breakdown in responsibility in evidence across the country.

Cameron went on to assert that "We have a real opportunity after last week where there was a long list of pledges but no explanation. No explanation of how we get there." As I noted yesterday, whether in three days' time we will have seen sufficient breadth and depth of policy announcements and whether they hold together as a coherent expression of the Party's vision to heal our broken society could determine whether Gordon Brown has the courage to opt for an early election and could determine what kind of Government this country has for the next five years: another five years of "nanny knows best," top-down, big state interference, or the chance to build a new society in which families and communities are empowered to take control of their our lives. The challenge is indeed huge. Let us all hope he rises to it, or we will all be the worse off for it.

Policy Blizzard's First Flurry

Talk of a "blizzard of conference policy announcements" has begun the "Cameron fight back" with what must surely rank as highly attractive, family-friendly changes to the tax and welfare system: the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth up to £250,000 and an increase in working tax credit paid to two-parent families (worth up to £2,000 a year for 1.8 million families with children), funded by a crackdown on "work-shy" benefits claimants, including "aggressive" penalties for those who turn down jobs.

Whether it and the flurry of other manifesto suggestions to be rolled out this week are seen to bring together and build upon the many recent policy group reports and whether they will prove sufficiently appealing to close the double-figure poll lead that Gordon Brown now enjoys remains to be seen...

If you want a reminder of the policies that you, The Difference readers, said you would most like to see the Party put forward, when David Cameron first suggested a blizzard of policy ideas, visit Your Policy Ideas Results.

Howard 11 - Cameron 21

Michael Howard, you may recall, summed up conservatism in eleven words:

• Cleaner hospitals, more police, school discipline, controlled immigration, lower taxes, accountability.

David Cameron is apparently to use twenty-one words:

• Giving people more opportunity and power over their lives.
• Making families stronger and society more responsible.
• Making Britain safer and greener.

Anyone care to offer their alternative suggestions?

Time For Change

Just days after Michael Ancram gave us his "simple political creed," suggesting there are three core Conservative values — integrity, national pride and humanity — David Cameron has now summarised the beliefs that drive him: family, responsibility, and opportunity.

He asserts that the political agenda flowing from a belief in those three values "means that the most important driving force of everything you do, the principle and purpose of your politics, is to give people more freedom and control over their lives":

Because freedom is the real benefit of a strong family - it's the security it gives you to get on and get out and get up, with a strong family behind you if you fall.

It's because if you believe in responsibility, you have to give people freedom. You literally cannot be responsible for something unless you have power and control over it.

And it's because opportunity means the freedom to be a doer not a done-for, taking down the barriers so that everybody can make the most of their life.

So that will be the central test for the decisions I make: will it give people more freedom and control over their lives?

That is the overriding aim of the government I will lead...

This will be the choice at the election.

State control from Labour. Freedom with the Conservatives. And we will say to the British people - choose freedom."

Thus, for all the talking up of differences by the media, it is perhaps unsurprising that "the essence of the modern compassionate Conservatism" David believes in is not all that different from that described by Michael in his pamphlet Still a Conservative: "Freedom of the individual lies at the historic heart of Conservatism and sets us apart from those who believe the state knows best." As David maintains, this key principle of freedom applies to every issue and we should not make the mistake of accepting the false choice presented by those on the left who say he shouldn't talk about Europe, crime or lower taxes and by those on the right who say he shouldn't talk about the NHS, the environment or well-being.

N.B. If you are looking for the Ofsted report Time for change?, click here.

Spelman on Ancram

Thank you to everybody who left questions for Caroline Spelman, not least because a team effort on these occasions helps create the air of a lively mind without necessarily putting in lots of hard work.

I'm afraid you're going to have to wait for our November issue to hear what the Party Chairman says about the best strategies for making news headlines in the run up to the election and the assertion that the party has gone lukewarm on the issue of an EU referendum but, to whet your appetites, here's a snippet about her views on Michael Ancram's "simple political creed":

"He gave a personal view on what Conservatives have stood for, and that will be different from somebody else's personal view of what Conservatives have stood for. I don't entirely share his views and I don't agree with his criticism of David Cameron ­ I don't think that David Cameron has damaged the Thatcher legacy.

I have an open door policy for people to come and say what they think should change and what they think we should do differently. These are all ideas that we can capture, but they are things that should be said in private if politicians are going to be responsible about their position within the party and the use of that position to articulate their views."

Time to Inspire

The Conservatives' latest idea for healing Britain's broken society is a "universal scheme" to give every 16-year-old the chance "to mix with others away from home, give them a challenging mission to fulfil and enable them to be stretched in an environment they would never, otherwise, have encountered."

In an attempt to recapture the virtues of National Service, preparing young people for adult life, delivering the values of personal growth and service to others, and bringing Britain together in one shared, classless, patriotic mission, David Cameron is proposing a new sort of National Citizen Service, designed for the 21st Century. The six week programme would include an act of substantial community service, time away on a residential course, and a real challenge such as a week of basic training with the military or preparing a presentation to the board of a new social enterprise.

The only trouble is, if the programme is voluntary, then it sounds little different from what teenagers are already able to access through established platforms such as the Scout movement and the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. If we are truly to "unlock the full potential of the next generation" then surely such scheme will have to be truly universal — that is, compulsory. Otherwise, the same self-motivated and parentally-supported youngsters will participate as already benefit from what is currently on offer — and the same anti-social yobs will continue being a nuisance in our communities.

"Mend Our Broken Society"

Well, much has already been written about Cameron's Newsnight interview last night, both in the dead tree press and across the blogosphere. If I were to recommend one opinion, it would be Dizzy's, who describes David's tack on immigration as "a brilliant piece of triangulation against Labour and the traditional Left":

Cameron's decision to frame the question of immigration around the idea of its potential impact on the public services makes the possibility of the instant knee-jerk charge of racism very difficult for Left to do. After all, if they just reject his comments out of hand they are effectively saying they don't care about the quality of the public services, and they're not going to do that now are they?

Personally, besides the overall strength of his performance (despite the distracting shadows caused by the vertical lighting), I came away with two main impressions. Firstly, his opening emphasis on his vision statement for a Conservative government, to mend our broken society. Secondly, his responses to questions about the European Union, which I thought probably wouldn't go down particularly well the EU-sceptics (let alone the eurosceptics) in the Party, but which surely serve as a rebuttal to anyone claiming that he is "lurching to the right."

It's Time To Fight Back

Last Friday, David Cameron said crime-fighting measures would fail "if we don't build the prisons and train the necessary staff to run them." Today, he published It's time to fight back, his party's plans for tackling the country's crime crisis.

In contrast to the Government's failed "one-dimensional approach" of hyperactive legislation, the document proposes a three-stage solution to fighting crime: in the short term, getting more police back on the street; in the medium, reforming schools and the criminal justice system; and in the long run, strengthening families and communities. It contains many excellent recommendations, including: facilitating a permanent police visibility on the streets, scrapping the Early Release Scheme, reforming alcohol licensing, providing local control over policing, introducing a UK Border Police, and abolishing the Human Rights Act.

Among the proposals, Cameron pledges "A Conservative Government will build more prison places." However, a poll published in today's Guardian indicates that the public no longer believes tough prison sentences are the best way to tackle crime:

Politicians in all parties routinely assume that voters think prison works. But 51% of those questioned want the government to find other ways to punish criminals and deter crime...

Opposition to more imprisonment is driven by a widespread belief that prisons make crime worse. More people agree with the statement "prison doesn't work, it turns people into professional criminals who then commit more crime" than think "prison punishes crime, keeps criminals off the streets and deters others".

Only 42% of all voters, and 39% of women, think prisons are an effective punishment, against 49%, and 52% of women, who say they fail to work.

Quite clearly, whoever is in power has much to do if public faith in the prison system is to be restored. It is therefore encouraging to see that the thinking behind the Conservatives' prison building proposals is not merely to "keep criminals off the streets" but that "reducing overcrowding is the key to reducing re-offending by ex-prisoners." Furthermore, in view of suggestions made by this blog for an altogether more creative approach towards justice, it is good to read that the Conservatives are committed to transforming prisons from Labour's overcrowded "human warehouses" into "places of education, hard work, rehabilitation and restoration."

The policy document continues: "A Conservative Government will reform prison regimes to help break the cycle of reoffending, and we will ensure appropriate provision for the mentally ill and offenders with drugs problems. Furthermore, we believe that far more needs to be done to assist and supervise ex-offenders on their release from prison. Here there is a central role for the voluntary sector." This too, as previously suggested by this blog, would surely also prove an invaluable step in restoring faith in the whole justice system. Moreover, given that 90% of prisoners have at least one significant mental health problem†, providing proper treatment for those who are mentally ill might also go some way to addressing the prison overcrowding problem!

As always, let us know in the comments what you think should be done.

† Source: recent Hansard reference to "Psychiatric morbidity among prisoners in England and Wales" (Office for National Statistics, 1998)

Defending the Socially Responsible

"We should ask not just what we expect from our government in response to these dreadful crimes - but what do we expect from ourselves and from society? Just as the Military Covenant sets out what we - society - must do for our military, so today we should consider our obligations in tackling crime and building a stronger society."

What hope have we really got of realising the Conservative's vision for a socially responsible society when a train guard who was attacked by a group of disorderly youths after he asked them to take their feet off a seat is fired from his job? Southeastern railway say he should have walked away, but as the sacked guard, Robbie Moran notes, "Walking away and abandoning your passengers to someone that's being aggressive, that's not customer care to me."

Even before questions about the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones by a BMX-riding teenager in Croxteth have ceased being asked, today we learn that a 23-year-old man with learning difficulties, Brent Martin, has died in hospital after being "savagely attacked" by a gang of up to five youths on Sunderland's Town End Farm estate — an area of low-level anti-social behaviour and relatively low level crime.

David Cameron is surely right when he suggests we need "a national recognition that it is not just up to the Government to take responsibility for the state of our nation, it is up to all of us":

To me this is what social responsibility is all about. Not just sitting back and saying that the government must act, but all of us saying: this is my country, my society, my responsibility - and I must play my part.

It means parents taking responsibility for bringing up children properly. It means schools playing their part in instilling discipline and good values. It means all of us recognising our obligations not just as parents but as neighbours, as members of a community and understanding that those obligations are as important as simply paying our taxes and obeying the law. It means understanding and acting on that age old maxim that it takes a village to raise a child. It means retailers stopping the sale of alcohol to young teenagers. It means music companies, media companies, games manufacturers, not just thinking "what is my social responsibility as a company in terms of the projects I support and the charities I back, good and important as they are" but asking: "what is the effect of the music I produce, the games I market and the programmes I broadcast?"

That is true social responsibility.

We should be a country that defends the actions of people like Mr Moran, not one that always seems to take the side of the bully, even to defend the "rights" of killers such as Learco Chindamo.

Is William Golding's Lord of the Flies even required reading in schools still?

First Impressions

Fresh back from a wonderful time in Venice and the best part of a week completely without listening to or reading any news, my first thoughts are "We're becoming as bad as America" — Police shot at in an M5 pursuit, just days after biker Gerry Tobin was murdered on the M40, and Liverpool's 11-year-old Rhys Jones the country's latest victim of gun crime.

Commenting on a past post about gun crime, Jeremy from Liverpool suggested using dog training to help reform disruptive teenagers. Has anybody else got any suggestions about how the worsening trend towards a gun culture might be reversed, besides the Government's usual more legislation?

UPDATE #1: I have now seen Iain Duncan Smith's excellent piece in the Daily Mail:

This social decline has come about because of the breakdown of the family, rampant drug and alcohol abuse, and the collapse of any political will to uphold the law.

Britain is now truly the sick man of Europe, with the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, divorce, alcoholism among the young, drug misuse and educational failure.

He suggests introducing a policy of zero tolerance towards all anti-social behaviour, ensuring the courts act more efficiently in dealing with offenders, and that the police, who he says "are not only weighed down by bureaucracy but have been rendered almost powerless against offenders by the State's obsession with human rights" must reclaim the streets. Picking up on last month's Social Justice Policy Group report, he also discusses practical steps to tackling family breakdown, reforming the welfare state and dealing confidently with drug and alcohol abuse.

In case anyone had forgotten, this is but one very solid reason why we need a Conservative Government after the next general election.UPDATE #2: "Anarchy in the UK"

I see that Cameron has also been busy while I was away, calling for the Human Rights Act to be scrapped and replaced with a new Bill of Rights and for a strengthening of family and community bonds to help counter the rise of yob culture:

We need to make men realise that having children is an 18-year commitment - not a one-night stand. We need to make mothers realise that it's work, not welfare, that offers their family the best future. We need to help couples stay together, not drive them apart with the tax and benefits system. And we need to make society as a whole - that's you and me - realise that we all have duties to our neighbours.

Now I just need to check out Louise Bagshawe's Reasons to vote Conservative at ConservativeHome.

The Weakest Link

Leadership often means saying what others don't want to hear and being able to point out an alternative way forward. Anyone doubting David Cameron's leadership needs to read his speech on school discipline today.

With figures showing that almost 40,000 children were suspended from school at least three times last year, over 1,700 children were thrown out of school for assaults on teachers, and with Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) condemned by Ofsted as the weakest link in the education system, the Conservative Party leader calls for less reliance on PRUs and more emphasis on the independent voluntary sector to educate school troublemakers. But before detailing a plan of action for the future, he examines the ways in which the Government has failed us:

In education, the whole country is still suffering from a series of orthodoxies which are a sort of hangover from the 1960s.

First, the idea that we should treat every child not as unique, but as identical - that equality and equal rights mean throwing every child into the same class in the same school.

It is this that has bred the doctrine of inclusion for all - the idea that schools should cater for everyone, no matter what their needs, aptitudes or behaviour. The result is special schools closed, and some children with special needs inappropriately included in mainstream education. Bright kids are held back and less able kids are left behind.

Second, the orthodoxy that education is a process not of learning from a teacher, but of solitary discovery - that the child should guide himself to knowledge. The result is the lack of rigour and falling standards we are becoming so familiar with.

And finally, the orthodoxy that schools should not be independent institutions, accountable to parents and the local community, but local outposts of the central state. The result is a target culture which makes it far harder for heads to create their own ethos for their school - and that includes rules on discipline.

Of course, anyone can criticise the Government for its mistakes. But Mr Cameron goes on to explain how the Conservatives will improve the provision of education for excluded children:

• First, we will stop the closure of special schools. Over 60 per cent of children in PRUs have special educational needs. That's too many, we need to ensure there is the proper provision for these kids.
• Second, we will ensure there is earlier intervention for kids with emotional and behavioural difficulties. I would like to see kids with emotional and behavioural difficulties picked up much earlier, at the start of primary school, rather than later in secondary school when they cost far more to look after and are far less likely to change their ways. Schools specialising in emotional and behavioural difficulties do an important and difficult job - too many have closed or are facing cutbacks.
• Third, and vitally, we need a whole new relationship between state schools and those voluntary bodies and social enterprises which have real expertise in turning around kids who get excluded. It's time for the state sector to say that when it comes to these children, we're doing a bad job and you're doing a great job, we want to trust you with more of the resources, more responsibility, longer contracts and more freedom.

Once again, it all comes down to the Government's inability to trust the people. And, once again, the principles of empowerment and subsidiarity should be applied to all of us, not just young people...

Telling It As It Is

"The document that will shape Tory policy, obtained by the BBC, paints a picture of Britain as a broken society riddled with debt and addiction, welfare dependency, family breakdown and educational failure."

Today's news on Breakthrough Britain, the report due out next week from the Conservative Party's Social Justice Policy Group, reminded me of Peter Franklin's Diary entry in last month's issue of The Difference:

There was once a time when the role of a politician was to the sit the nation down and break the bad news. A succession of economic crises meant a succession of grave announcements — of austerity budgets, three-day weeks and belt-tightening exercises. But with the partial exception of the early 1990s, we've had none of that for 20 years or more. Politics has become a soft-soap exercise: a slippery attempt to claim credit for the economic good times; a shower of schemes for spending our money on our behalf; and a lather of excuses for why so much cash has left so much undone. Politics has become a matter of breaking the good news even when there isn't any. ...

We're richer than we've ever been, but unhappy. We're deep in debt, our families are falling apart, there are guns on the streets and the weather's gone all weird. Despite our material comforts we know where's something wrong with the way we live. When a politician articulates our secret fears we may react with anger, but at least we recognise the bad news for what it is: the truth.

If David Cameron is right that the big challenge that we've all got to deal with today is social breakdown, then the first step will be accepting the extent of the problem, however uncomfortable the facts make us feel.

Music's Medicine

• Is some music, are some lyrics, are some videos and are some artists, helping to create a culture in which an anti-learning culture, truancy, knives, violence, guns, misogyny are glorified?
• Can we see the effects of this on our young people, in our schools and on our streets?
• Do we think we can combat this culture by government policies, policing and criminal justice alone?

Calling on the UK music industry to promote positive role models for young people to look up to, David Cameron answers: yes, yes, and no, respectively.

If people are now beginning to accept that certain music has indeed become a poison of young people's minds and a poison of our broken society, perhaps there is yet hope that it may once again become "the medicine of the mind" and "the medicine of the breaking heart."

Your Policy Ideas Results

Gordon Brown has been Prime Minister for a full week. After an initially impressive start, he performed poorly at his first PMQs today, needing to be rescued by John Reid over the Government's position concerning Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

The question now is how David Cameron will respond. Concluding the policy survey that we have been conducting since the Conservative leader announced that he would be launching a Blizzard of Ideas against the new Prime Minister, below are the top ten policies suggested and voted on by The Difference readers that you would most like to see rolled out in the coming weeks, listed under the six headings being used in the Party's official policy review process. Interestingly, the most popular suggestion was made by Alex, the recent winner in our ongoing comment competition!

Making our economy more competitive
1. Increase the income tax personal allowance to about £10,000
9= Leave the EU
Public service improvement
2. A universal school voucher system
6. Provision for public petitions to trigger Parliamentary debates
Improving our quality of life
3. Reduce immigration
7= Allocate funds to sexual health programmes advocating abstinence as a positive life-style choice
Protecting our security
4= Re-install border controls
7= Invest in our armed forces
Social justice
4= Reduce the legal time-frame in which abortion is allowed
9= Enforce strict guidelines on allowing state-funded abortions
Globalisation & global poverty
9= Champion a Global Free Trade Association

A total of 567 votes were cast — so thank you to everybody who took part in this campaign. You can find the full results at last week's Poll of Polls.

Are We Ready?

The BBC's Nick Robinson is right when he says it's been a great few days for "Not Blair". Gordon Brown's performance on Sunday AM was exactly what one would expect from a new Conservative Prime Minister — as Andrew Marr put it at one point, "Cleaner hospitals, more city academies, pushing power down. These are all Conservative Party policies." Conservative supporters I have spoken with have been impressed with the humility with which Brown spoke when he first entered Number Ten. One suggested his "substance" will increasingly make David Cameron look flaky.

With Brown's cabinet expected to announce constitutional reforms including a British Bill of Rights and greater powers for MPs over decisions traditionally exercised by the prime minister and with his insistence, echoed by the leader of the Commons, Harriet Harman, that he will brief MPs rather than journalists about the government's business, I can well imagine the odds on a snap election will very soon drop. After all, the former Chancellor knows better than any of us the fragile state of the economy. All he needs is to do what the Conservatives feel unable to do and promise the country a tax cut and Cameron may discover there's nothing he can do to prevent an unprecedented fourth Labour election victory.

Stand Up, Speak Up!

"Stand up and lead the way in getting people involved in a massive grassroots debate on the future of our country!"

Today I was speaking with someone who was still under the delusion that all political parties are the same. Tomorrow, David Cameron is to make a speech making clear that once Blair has finally gone, "The British people will have a clear choice. A choice between two different visions of society. A choice between two different approaches to running the country. And a choice between the old and the new politics." He explains:

"Social responsibility means that every time we see a problem, we don’t just ask what government can do. We ask what people can do, what society can do. That’s the big difference between us and Gordon Brown. His answer to crime, his answer to education, his answer to everything - is a top-down government scheme. Whatever the issue, whatever the challenge, whatever the circumstances, under Gordon Brown all we’ll get is “he knows best” politics, as he sits as his desk expecting a grateful nation to wait with bated breath for the latest master-plan to emerge.

"That’s the big difference between us and Gordon Brown. We get the modern world, he doesn’t. We trust people, he’s suspicious of them. We believe in social responsibility, he believes in state control."

He will conclude with a challenge, "We will soon be launching Stand Up, Speak Up – a chance for everyone in this country to get involved in shaping the next Conservative manifesto. We hear a lot about political apathy these days. Well I want all of you here and all our Conservative friends around the country to stand up and lead the way in getting people involved in a massive grassroots debate on the future of our country. Let’s show the cynics some energy, not apathy."

Let's show them, indeed! If you have not yet suggested the policy that you would most like to see David Cameron adopt as part of his Blizzard of Ideas when Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, please do so now — you have just ten days left!

See also: Do One Thing and Your Most Wanted Policies
Hat-tip: ConservativeHome