A final appeal

He was everything that Ed Miliband last week was not.

Whereas Mr Miliband roamed the stage like a stand-up comedian with a backdrop of people who were there to give him moral support as he told his flat stories, Mr Cameron was solidly anchored to the spot and, alone with his podium, he looked and sounded like a Prime Minister.

The polls repeatedly show that the public have not embraced Mr Miliband and this was reinforced last week when not only was his speech underwhelming, but it later emerged that, embarrassingly, he had forgotten to impart important chunks on the economy.

A confident Mr Cameron laid into him: “Ed – people forget their car keys, school kids sometimes forget their homework. But if you want to be Prime Minister of this country, you cannot forget the biggest challenge we face.” In fact, so confident was Mr Cameron, he departed from his script and inserted a joke about him once forgetting his own daughter in a pub.

But Mr Miliband is not the only enemy Mr Cameron faces. Perhaps a more deadly enemy is Ukip, which is enticing Tory waverers away.

Mr Cameron appealed to them with a Thatcherite agenda of strong economy, home ownership, huge Europe bashing and deep tax cuts. He even appealed to the waverers in a Thatcherite way – Mrs Thatcher’s tax cuts emboldened the hopes of those who wanted to own their home, some shares, a video cassette recorder (this was the early 1980s, remember) and to enjoy a foreign holiday. Similarly, Mr Cameron’s promise to raise the

40p threshold would only directly benefit a minority of taxpayers today, but it will appeal to all who hope that by 2020 their lives will have improved so much that they will be taking home £50,000.

If that wasn’t persuasive enough, Mr Cameron even had a toe-curlingly crude analogy to turn them from Ukip: “On May 7, you could go to bed with Nigel Farage, and wake up with Ed Miliband.”

Beyond attacking his two opponents, yesterday’s speech showed that there is a Cameronian philosophy emerging. He is now committed to rolling back the state with deep public spending cuts right up to 2020 to fund his tax reductions.

Some might go so far as to say that this is a reckless commitment – Britain is currently running a budget overspend of £100bn-a year so £10bn of tax give-aways is the last thing the indebted country needs.

HOWEVER, everyone will see it as a complete reversal in political thinking from a decade ago when the Blair government put a penny on National Insurance to pay for greater investment in the NHS.

It is also very different to Mr Miliband’s vision – the headline-grabber from his speech was expensive public investment in 3,000 more midwives, 5,000 more care workers, 8,000 more GPs, and 20,000 more nurses.

So there is a real divide between the parties, and the Tories – stubbornly five per cent behind Labour in the polls – left Birmingham buoyed by Mr Cameron’s performance and confident of winning in May.

They see the polls shifting their way as the economy continues to defy the dire predictions of their opponents and to grow – “the light is coming up after some long dark days”, as Mr Cameron put it.

They see the Liberal Democrats’ vote crumbling, and they hope to win some of their seats in the south-west. They see a post-referendum surge in Scottish Nationalist Party support north of the border, which could make Labour’s 41 Scottish MPs vulnerable. They also see themselves winning the second by-election caused by a Ukipper splitter, at Rochester and Strood, and thus symbolically halting Mr Farage’s momentum. And so, despite what the polls currently say, in a four-way fight, they can see themselves winning.

However, for all Mr Cameron’s demolition of Mr Miliband’s personality yesterday, the public have never embraced the Labour leader and they find his sidekick, Ed Balls, equally unlovable, but that has not caused them to reject the party out of hand. In fact, Mr Cameron’s avowedly Tory speech will do little to loosen Labour’s hold on its northern heartlands.

And for all Mr Cameron’s demolition of Ukip and bashing of European institutions like the Court of Human Rights, Mr Farage’s party remains the only one calling for Britain’s exit from Europe on a point of principle – and that remains a simple, enticing message for the Tory waverers.

Those waverers will be asking themselves whether they trust Mr Cameron to negotiate meaningful reform in Europe, just as those swing-voters in marginal seats are wondering whether Mr Cameron’s they really trust him with public services like the NHS as he cuts deep to fund his tax changes.

Despite his brilliant personal bravura, do you trust him to deliver – or, because he sounds so statesmanlike, would it be too risky to entrust your vote elsewhere?