Cameron delivers Speech at CPC

In delivering his speech on the final day of the Conservative Party Conference, David Cameron attempted to re-define what his government is about.

Although not as good as Ed Miliband’s speech last week, it has generally got positive reviews from pundits. Unfortunately I fell some of his speech was dishonest; firstly was his comment that the damage from the initial recession was “worse than we thought,” in fact the very opposite is true. Quite recently in fact, the figures for the collapse have been revised upwards, not downwards. Cameron also spoke about how Labour was the party of “borrow, borrow, borrow” despite the fact that borrowing is higher now than it ever was under New Labour.

It’s interesting to note that there was not a single mention of coalition, Nick Clegg or the Liberal Democrats. His willingness to ignore half of the coalition will not have gone down well with Clegg or his party. The reason many give for this is that this was a Conservative speech for a Conservative audience. He went down the typical Conservative route of talking about fiscal responsibility (which is fallacy reputation that the Conservatives have), welfare reform and austerity. Another line he decided to go down was education where he spoke of how he felt students needed more exams! What a ridiculous statement! Firstly, it is widely agreed that students are taking far too many exams, secondly his party is advocating reducing the number of exams! His section on education turned bizarre when he made the following claim:

“And to all those who say: he wants children to have the kind of education he had at his posh school, I say you’re absolutely right.”

I find this so bizarre because nobody would argue against everyone having the kind of fantastic education that David Cameron got, we simply recognise that that type of education costs £30,000 pa and isn’t a feasible option. No matter how much you want everyone to have that education, it’s simply unachievable.

It wasn’t the only time in the speech when he referenced his privileged up-bringing; it seemed to be a common theme throughout the speech. I think it was a really bad mistake on his part, he came across as pompous and a fool. He said that he wants everyone to be privileged, but that it is a confusing and impossible concept. Only a few people can have privilege, if everyone has privilege then no-one does. If this was a reply to Ed Miliband’s “I am an ordinary man” and his theme of One Nation, then it was incredibly miss guided. The country has a view of this government as posh and out-of-touch, you’re not supposed to highlight this in your most watched speech of the year!