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Conservative conference: Cameron sends them home smiling
Andrew Alexander
This was billed as a make-or-break speech for David Cameron, and he decided to make it harder on himself by abandoning his pre-prepared text in favour of occasional glances at notes on a table.
This was not an entirely spontaneous address - it repeated, almost word-for-word, excerpts from the apparently abandoned speech given to journalists beforehand.
His team will have worked on it for weeks and he will have practiced for days - but to speak without an autocue for 65 minutes is still seriously impressive.
The activists in Blackpool's Winter Gardens obviously agreed, and melted when he told them "it might be a bit messy, but it will be me".
Just as Cameron used the same tactic two years ago in the same venue as part of his successful leadership bid, he will now be hoping it can help catapult him into Number 10.
So what was in the speech itself? A canter through the party's emerging policy ideas, which together in one speech did sound like the essentials for an election-ready manifesto.
Some rallying cries for traditional Tories included passages on Europe, school discipline, cracking down on the welfare state, support for married couples, more bobbies on the beat and tougher immigration rules.
On the modernising agenda, there was a half-muted commitment not to back down on climate change and green taxes, greeted less than enthusiastically by the audience.
There were plenty of free-floating slogans, most of which seems to leave the Empress Ballroom fairly cold.
The conference is taglined "Conservatives: it's time for change", a typically obtuse political slogan.
But Cameron went overboard with Blair-style grammar-free sentences like "new world, old politics failing, change required".
The final refrain was "we can get it if we really want it", picked up when Cameron left the hall as the speakers pumped out the Jimmy Cliff classic You Can Get it if You Really Want and activists clapped along in slightly manic fashion.
There was the obligatory reference to social networking websites, although saved from becoming totally cringeworthy with a joke - a reference to the Facebook group 'David Cameron is a hottie'.
This was not a tub thumping speech to rally the party faithful before an impending election, although it may well have that effect.
It was a personal speech playing to Cameron's strengths, his undoubted charisma and ability to charm party members even when they aren't quite sure what he is saying.
Gordon Brown at Labour conference in Bournemouth played the statesman by ignoring the Tories, and anyone expecting a vicious assault on the prime minister was disappointed.
Cameron tried to show he too is above party politics by making only one oblique reference to Brown's announcement on withdrawing troops from Iraq.
The personal passages, like an admission that he was the Eton-educated son of a magistrate and stockbroker, were nicely delivered.
Despite risking accusations of style over substance, Cameron's speech will undoubtedly look more compelling on the evening news Brown's at Bournemouth - and that is probably where it counts.
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Published: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 17:05:30 GMT+01
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