David Cameron is changing the Conservatives, but remaining true to our core values. He is right to modernise and broaden the appeal of the Party. He is right to focus on the issues people care about, respecting the environment for ours and future generations, helping make poverty history, improving public services for all and not the few. The approach is grounded in sharing responsibility between the state and the citizen and trusting the people who have a right to expect solutions from their political leaders and hold us accountable for our actions.
These changes are important, but they are grounded in core Conservative values that we have always stood for: economic stability, the opportunity for all to achieve financial security, the right for all to expect personal security. These are the values of Conservatives of old and new. David Cameron is from the same tradition, he is using language of today and tomorrow, not of yesterday.
It was inspiring stuff, but of course it is the electorate not our own MPs we have to convince. The conference came hard on the heels of encouraging opinion polls but also straight after the by-elections in Blaenau Gwent and Bromley. Both bad results for Labour, but neither good for the Conservatives either.
This reminds us how much work remains to be done to gain the trust of the electorate.
