Thursday, October 08, 2009

A few thoughts on Cameron's speech

I was dipping in and out of David Cameron's speech - which you can still watch here - I was struck on two occasions by a very hollow inauthentic ring. Not, as it happens, when he spoke about Ivan; I think that was genuine and desperately sad.

The first was that bloody letter from some OAPs besieged by yobs. It was a device Enoch Powell used in his Rivers of Blood Speech and had a phoney feel about it then. The other was at the very end when he was walking out of the arena, waving to the crowd, still with his mic on, and self conciously turned to his wife and said "let's get those kids home darling". I'd have preferred it if he'd muttered something like, "Look darling there's David Davis, what a twat."

I liked following the tweets afterwards, for and against. Usual political guff: "no policies" "devil in the detail" "Blair lite" "toff" as well as overblown right wing hype like "Big Government and socialism quiver in your boots. Cameron is coming."

But I'm also liking a few wise words such as these:

Phil Jones - liked the honesty of flushing out the debt problems

David Ottewell - it was a vision speech, deliberately dull.

Or as Matt Finnegan said: "He has articulated a vision of Britain which Brown failed to do. Whether it's the right vision is another matter...."

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