The Sketch: He had them quivering like greyhounds

Horizon to horizon, blue-sky Conservatism. What a speech. It had them quivering like greyhounds. I felt my own withers being wrung from time to time. Either that or I'm getting shingles. Terrific achievement. There wasn't a word in it that any true Tory could dispute and yet it surely went out to a very wide swathe of middle England.

Now we've got a contest on our hands: blue skies over brown fields. No notes or autocue, constant eye contact with his audience, unfaltering, as sound as a bell. "I haven't got a script" (with me), he said, but it was, of course, intensely scripted. It was the best written Conservative speech since Ronald Millar quit.

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There was little direct reference to Gordon Brown but every word, gesture, inflection, set up an unspoken comparison. Young, fluent, fresh, modern, genuine, generous. He did that reaching-out thing to new voters but never as anything other than a Tory. At last, we got the full exposition of Conservative values I've been moaning about for two years. In tone, scope and content it was an extraordinary leap into the middle of the battle, reclaiming for his party all the ground they'd abandoned for years.

It was so good you could imagine the Tories winning an election (I'm really having to search for a dark lining to the silver cloud). The best bits? Mocking the stifling controls professionals have to endure and offering freedom for personal initiative ("but freedom's not enough"). Private schools to come into the state system! (That'll bring down the state monopoly from the inside.)

It's the generosity Gordon can't manage. Tories are vermin. He wants to eradicate them, like HIV. Did you hear Neil Kinnock at the Independent fringe this year? "Let's grind the bastards' faces into the dirt!" he cried. It's the sort of remark that lost him the 1992 election. Compare Cameron's: "Ed Balls gave a speech I could have given myself." Or, of Labour: "These are not bad people with bad intentions." And: "Unless we understand why they have failed, we will not succeed." It is a brilliant rhetorical strategy. The New Testament tells us to forgive our enemies because in that way we heap coals of fire on their head. Politics works like that too. The nobler that Cameron can be, the more merrily will the coals burn in the Prime Minister's hair.

simoncarr@sketch.sc

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