What a gift

Dear David Cameron,

I respect the fact that you are not bothering to fight Gordon Brown for the headlines during the Labour Party conference.  There isn’t really much point, seeing as he will steal the headlines regardless of any counter-offensive you launch.  But as you rightly spotted yesterday, Gordon Brown’s speech was light on content and was clearly designed to bring the State further into people’s lives - and this is where you have to bring him crashing down to earth.

To save you a little time, here is a list of points to attack Brown on, either because he forgot to mention them or because he failed to address them in sufficient detail:

EDUCATION - How will he halt the freefall in the credibility of our national examinations?  Why should it only be people on low incomes who get free university education?  How come ‘catch-up’ classes have so far failed to stop an increase in the number of NEETs?

FAMILY - Why talk about child poverty, seeing as poverty has increased under Labour?  How can you extend maternity leave and not paternity leave?  How can small businesses cope with such a change?

CRIME - How can he attack underage drinkers after 10 years of ignoring them?  Surely 24-hour licensing has made things worse?  Is more stop-and-search really going to help community relations and cut crime?  Has he forgotten that he has introduced most of the bureaucracy in the police force that he is now trying to cut?  Didn’t Labour claim to be tough on the causes of crime ten years ago?

EU - Why should we be “good Europeans”?  Where is our referendum?

NHS - Has he forgotten that he was Chancellor when all the hospital wards were being left dirty?  How we will double the number of matrons when we aren’t training enough hospital staff at the moment?

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, he’s talking about spending lots more money when he is cutting public sector pay this year, he completely ignored immigration controls and the EU referendum, he didn’t propose anything to help mend our ‘broken society’, a lot of his initiatives were re-releases of old policies - and last but by no means least, his references to ‘Britishness’ were sickening.  He doesn’t care about the appalling deal that England gets thanks to his funding arrangements, nor is he going to stop Scottish MPs voting in England as it increases his level of support relative to the Conservatives.

Mr Cameron, this speech was a gift to you.  He failed to produce anything to capture the public spirit and he failed to achieve any advances in policy over Blair.  If you can’t tear him to pieces over this speech, there really isn’t much chance for the Conservative Party at the next election - whenever it may be.

Yours in hope,

A.Tory