Eddie Barnes: This wasn't a classic but at least PM managed to shrug off pessimist tag

Published on Wednesday 6 October 2010 19:43

DAVID Cameron has had harder speeches to make before his party conference, notably the famous note-free job-saver of 2007. But he has never had to address his party before as Prime Minister.

The PM's speech is as close as the country gets to American's State of the Union address.

Mr Cameron yesterday threatened to reach the higher ground of statesmanship, but eventually fell short.

As happened in the general election campaign, he attempted to weld two things together: the Big Society - which is his big idea - and the Big Crash, which is all everyone else is talking about. The central message of Mr Cameron's speech was that the former would see Britain through the latter.

Only if Britain rose from its collective sofa - to set up businesses, to get a job, to set up free schools - would the country emerge stronger from its current low ebb, he argued.

"Your country needs you," said the Prime Minister, Kitchener-esque. In a letter sent to supporters last night, he declared his vision of forming a "coalition of the British people".

His plan, he wrote, was "not just to do our duty as a government, but to stir a spirit of national unity and resolve; to lift the national heart to the challenges we share".

Mr Cameron himself acknowledged yesterday there would be some cynicism about this vision. Aren't most people already doing their bit to help the nation? Furthermore, surely most of them have got bigger things to worry about at present - such as just how big the coalition cuts are going to be.

Considering the mammoth cloud those cuts are casting over politics at present, the Prime Minister had surprisingly little to say on the matter. There was the mandatory attack on Labour, who he accused of selfishness over their desire to delay the cost cutting. There was a speedy mention of the child benefit row, and the need for wealthier families to "shoulder their burden".

What was missing, however, was a global examination of the financial times which a Prime Minister might be expected to contemplate.

This, combined with the pretty cheap parodying of Labour's time in office, and an off-the-shelf Tory attack on bureaucrats (otherwise known as the people who work for him), ensured that the speech fell short of being above politics.

But one thing the speech did achieve was to answer Ed Miliband's claim last week that the Prime Minister was the "pessimist" of British politics.

Mr Cameron knows the danger of being seen solely as a gloomy Thatcherite axe-wielder. If nothing else, yesterday's speech was primarily designed to show he remains a man of vision, who can see beyond the cuts to a more happy society.

With his appeal for a Big Society, this he achieved. By the end, the impression wasn't that the speech was pessimistic; it was that its optimism bordered on the idealistic.

In summary, this won't be a speech that will be remembered over time.The Government's cutbacks - to be announced on 20 October - will see to that.