Nick Robinson described it as
a speech designed to answer those who say they don't know what he really believes. His answer - a traditional Conservative one - family... community... country.
It was a speech designed too to show what makes him angry - that was Labour's belief that "big government" was the cure rather than the problem.
According to Iain Dale
David Cameron's speech this afternoon was in stark contrast to Osborne's. There was some tough talk but he shared a vision of the kind of Britain he wanted to see and used some very optimistic language. His attacks on Gordon Brown worked well and he showed a real passion. It was a speech seeking to seal a deal with the concerns of those who are not yet convinced by Cameron as a person or his own brand of politics. It was light on policy details, but so it should have been. Other members of his team provided enough meaty proposals during the course of the week. What I wanted from Cameron was what I got - a total contrast to Gordon Brown's machine gun speech last week.
John Rentoul was underwelmed
David Cameron took my advice after all. That was a "just come to Manchester, keep your head down and let Labour lose the next election" speech.
In contrast Frazer Nelson says
This was one of the best speeches I have heard David Cameron give. It may not have been a masterpiece of oratory, he may have read from notes, left too make lulls lulls inspiring only a few standing ovations. But it was packed with mission, seriousness, vision, principles – and, most of all, a real agenda
Jon Craig was rather intrigued by the seeming announcements of who will be in a future conservative cabinet particually that
it was revealing that when Cameron pledged to "ring-fence" the budget for international development, there was no mention of spokesman Andrew Mitchell. A significant omission?
Other omissions? Eric Pickles, Caroline Spelman, Theresa Villiers, Nick Herbert and Jeremy Hunt will all have left Manchester a bit jittery after listening to their leader's speech.
Just before David Cameron came on stage they played a video looking back at his four years in charge of the party. It concentrated on the modernising moments — the huskie hugging, the efforts to get more women into Parliament and the rest. When Cameron did these things, some critics mocked them, claimed that they showed he was all style and no substance. But today we saw what those moments have made possible. Cameron devoted his pre-election conference speech to a classic conservative message, that the big state is the problem. Crucially, this message is getting a hearing. It is not being dismissed as those ideological Tories banging on again. Modernisation has achieved one of its principal purposes.says James Forsyth
Bagehot says that
it was definitely a good speech, even very good, and a better one in Mr Cameron’s delivery than it read on paper. He was strong on Afghanistan and on the indirect social costs of the deficit and debt, both foolishly downplayed at the Labour conference last week. There were three or four extremely resonant passages, on the NHS, on the need to address the welfare trap, on giving parents more choice and power over schools, and on not treating children like adults and adults like children. That is above all what a leader’s speech needs to achieve. I expect it will look very good on the news this evening.
And if you are really looking for a different angle check out Ruth Gledhill who writes that it was
full of Biblical allusion, according to Paul Woolley of the think tank Theos. His reasoning is below. Archbishop Cranmer considers it 'mildly theological'. The Rev Rob Marshall, one of his clergy in Kensington, has also analysed David Cameron's social theology for Articles of Faith.
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