Skipper

A friend of mine, observing my son, aged 18 months, bringing his hands together in an unwitting clap, observed: 'Congratulations, you've just qualified to be a delagate at the Conservative party Conference. My how they applaud! Seeing the nicely turned out and coiffured Tory women, lips open in anticipation and hands poised for the imminent clap line, made me realise why I vote Labour. They even cheered to the echo, the assertion that Michael Howard, Thatcherite loser of the last election, was a 'great leader of the Conservative Party'. God, they are awful!

But, to be fair, they are on the up and Cameron was bloody good this afternoon. His speech was essentially Blairite I thought: full of warm vacuities and nicely judged applause lines on the character of his party, its adaptability and so forth. He even said, in effect that he would be 'tough on crime: tough on the causes of crime.' But for this I applaud him- though not with the blind sychophancy of his audience today, of coure. I liked the way he gave credit to the maligned IDS and cited his party's record of social reform. 'Progressive Ends, Conservative Means' is a really good slogan for 2010.

On the 'novice' question, I think this will hang around his neck until he has been in office for a few months at least. The 'experienced expert on the economy' is working for Gordon and will continue to do so until the crisis is over. Meanwhile, Dave's ploy of offering full support to Brown during the crisis is the best he can hope to do. I noticed his citing of his constituent, Mr Wood, who's wife had died after poor NHS care. We'll hear a lot more about such cases in the run up to the election not to mention during the campaign itself.