So Conservative Party Conference, or #cpc13, is over.
The high point of any party conference is the Leader’s Speech. The Speech. Cameron’s party conference speech was very good this year for a number of reasons. It spoke about people, it had humour – some of it freelance and unscripted, it had changes in tempo and some overdue self-deprecation but more than all of these, which are now pretty standard in Cameron’s speeches, it had an argument, an enemy and a call to action. Add to that the magic of its success in speaking to the country as well as those in the conference hall.
The speech was obviously made easier by Miliband’s repositioning of the Labour Party last week which helped Cameron focus on the real electoral enemy and went some way to helping him talk in “We” in a way that united and focused the Conservative view externally and shifted it away from an internal discussion – which seldom works for any Party Leader.
What was also good about this speech was that it was not a stand-alone – policy announcements had been made already, policies were not listed in rote. The speech was about direction rather than detail – some would even call it vision.