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Central Concepts from David Cameron’s Speech to the Conservative Party

By: Beaglescout (Diary)  |  October 10th, 2009 at 02:44 PM  | 

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The Guardian recently analyzed David Cameron’s speech to the British Conservative Party Conference for the popularity of his applause lines. I’ve extracted in popularity order all the lines that got more than 15 seconds of applause, while excluding the introduction. The interesting thing to me is that all the most popular lines are based specifically on conservative principles.

David Cameron’s conference speech, 2009
Speech order
Statement
Applause, seconds

?
48 And when we look back we will say not that the government made it happen… …not that the minister made it happen… …but the businesswoman made it happen… …the police officer made it happen… …the father made it happen… …the teacher made it happen. You made it happen. 166.68
9 Let everyone in this hall show their appreciation to the men and women who fight for us 50.12
23 Thirty years ago this party won an election fighting against 98 per cent tax rates on the richest. Today I want us to show even more anger about 96 per cent tax rates on the poorest. 40.59
26 Excuse me? Who made the poorest poorer? Who left youth unemployment higher? Who made inequality greater? No, not the wicked Tories… you, Labour: you’re the ones that did this to our society. So don’t you dare lecture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the modern Conservative Party to fight for the poorest who you have let down. 36.56
43 And if we win the election, we will have as the strongest voice for our country’s interests, the man who is leading our campaign for a referendum, the man who will be our new British Foreign Secretary: William Hague. 19.53
16 Next year, Gordon Brown will spend more money on the interest on our debt than on schools. More than on law and order, more than on child poverty. So I say to the Labour Party and the trades unions just tell me what is compassionate, what is progressive about spending more on debt interest than on helping the poorest children in our country? 19.15
36 So when I see Ed Balls blow hundreds of millions on so-called “curriculum development” on consultancies, on quangos like the QCDA and BECTA like every other parent with a child at a state school I want to say: This is my child, it’s my money, give it to my headteacher instead of wasting it in Whitehall. 17.47
29 We’ve got to stop treating children like adults and adults like children. 17.43
18 Pensioners don’t want pity. They just want to know that if they’ve lived responsibly, they’ll be looked after in their old age. 16.91
35 Today let us honour their memory and send our thoughts and best wishes to all those, including Margaret Tebbit, who still bear the scars of that terrible night. 16.06
41 That’s why ID cards, 42 days and Labour’s surveillance state are so utterly unacceptable and why we will sweep the whole rotten edifice away. 15.75
12 I know what sustains me the most. She is sitting right there and I’m incredibly proud to call her my wife. 15.69
21 we will give back to the Bank of England its power to regulate the City powers that should never have been taken away. 15.5
20 In Britain today, there are entrepreneurs everywhere – they just don’t know it yet. Success stories everywhere – they just haven’t been written yet. We must be the people who release that potential. 15.38
34 The police aren’t on the streets because they’re busy complying with ten different inspection regimes. The police say the CPS isn’t charging people…because they have to hit targets to reduce the number of unsuccessful trials. And the prisons aren’t rehabilitating offenders…because they’re focused on meeting thirty-three different performance indicators. This all needs to change. 15.04

I’m not going to worry about the exact duration of the applause lines. For instance, the most popular line measured by applause duration was the very last line in the speech. The audience wasn’t necessarily applauding for that line, but for the whole speech. On the other hand, no politician would conclude a speech to his own convention with a line that was not guaranteed to resonate with the listeners.

Paraphrased, here are what the popular applause lines in the speech were all about.

  1. The government will not fix things; the people will fix things. Individual freedom.
  2. We appreciate our military who fight for us. National self-defense.
  3. Taxes don’t just hurt rich people; they hurt poor people too. Taxes are too high.
  4. The failures of the bureaucracy must be blamed on the people who controlled the bureaucracy when they failed. That has always been the Left. Personal responsibility.
  5. Our country’s freedom is endangered by the EU; our best leader in opposition to creeping EU dominance will be my foreign minister. Rule of law and a representative government.
  6. A crippling national debt created to benefit unions destroys our country’s safety nets for the poorest among us. Prudence.
  7. Too much so-called education money is spent on consultants and politically connected NGOs. Prudence.
  8. We need to stop treating children like adults and adults like children. Individual freedom, rights and responsibilities.
  9. Retired workers don’t want pity and government handouts, just to get the pensions they have earned. Rule of law.
  10. Let us honor those who have suffered. Kindness.
  11. Government surveillance and regulation has gone too far and we will sweep it out. Individual freedom. Rule of law.
  12. My wife sustains me. Marriage and family.
  13. Banks have been prevented by City government from making prudent financial decisions and we will stop this. Free market. Rule of law.
  14. We will unleash the entrepreneurs and new businesses that have been kept down by the left. Free market. Individual freedom.
  15. Police aren’t on the streets because they are complying with politically correct paperwork that prevents them from keeping the streets safe. This needs to change. Prudence.

And finally, the top line that wasn’t quite 15 seconds was, “This big government has reached the end of the road.” This is classic red meat, though not so much a statement of principle.

In my opinion, these lines express ideas that are popular in the US as well, not just among US conservatives but among independents and even Democrats. Conservatives in the US need to take these popular lines and use them, or lines like them.

In related news, a word cloud for Cameron’s speech can be found here.

Update 1: The whole speech.

Update 2: Comments on the speech from Melanie Phillips, Fraser Nelson, David Blackburn’s liveblog, Brian Wheeler, Matthew D’Ancona, Telegraph Editors, and Janet Daley.

Update 3: David Cameron’s responses to Telegraph readers’ questions.

Xposted from beaglescout-48.jpg

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COMMENTS

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  • penguin2

    It is obvious his audience got it. I noted that the military support applause was way up there as well. IMO, that reflects people who still have a sense of national pride and patriotism for their country.

    His last line (the highest applause) put it all together, without pulling any punches.

    So, why can’t we have strong Republican leaders in this country who espouse the same kind of message? I guess that is where our party is finding its way between being Dem lite or truly representative of conservative principles.

    • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com LJ “Beaglescout” Miller

      It’s not like Blair and Sarkozy were conservative, but they sure could say what needed to be said. Even the TOTUS can speechify a good conservative speech. The best conservative speechifier was Ronaldus Magnus. Maybe our pols could listen to him a few zillion times and learn something by osmosis.

      • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com LJ “Beaglescout” Miller

        had a great column about how single-party Democrat rule in Philly has destroyed the city. And he was a Democrat committeeman for much of that time.

        Next month, will Philadelphians hoping for an improved city again elect nothing but Democrats and expect a different result?

        Under Democratic monopoly, Philly residents have: the highest city tax rate in the nation, craven Council members cashing in on DROP, an incompetent Board of Revision of Taxes, a 25 percent city poverty rate, a pinball pay-to-play system, a Department of Human Services that kills kids, a school district with a near-50-percent dropout rate and city workers who don’t pay their taxes.

        As a wholly owned subsidiary of the over-promising and underperforming Democratic Party, Philadelphia is failing.

        Democratic politicians and policies are not solely responsible for our decline, but they’ve been in the driver’s seat for a tortoise’s lifetime and have driven the car into a ditch. If Democrats aren’t responsible, who is – Apaches?

        Will you ever hold them accountable?

        Like Cameron did in the fourth applause line, American conservatives need to lambaste Democrats at every opportunity for all the ruination they and their socialist allies have caused in the American cities they have controlled since the 60s.

    • nessa

      We can’t have strong Republican Leaders in this country who espouse the same kind of message because Mr. Cameron is speaking from his heart, he firmly believes each and every one of the values and principles he espouses. Too many of our Republican Leaders only believe in their next election, their next earmark, or how their latest soundbite will play on Obama’s media. A principled man, or woman, must stand on his principles, he cannot change his position with the blowing of the political winds. his vote cannot be bought by the addition of earmarks or money to a disastrous bill like Crap and Tax. He will not be silenced when he sees wrong doing like the administrations acts concerning Honduras. But our Republican Leaders do just that, daily. Each new abortion of a bill that the statists bring to vote brings new traitors to our principles. If we don’t start sending principled men and women to congress the best we can hope for is a rerun of 1994 and a temporary delay of the progressive agenda. They will return to incrementalism and their progress will slow but it will continue, inexorably toward their goals.

  • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

    She is an unyielding conservative standing against the tide – one of the best commentators around on either side of the Atlantic, IMHO.

    From her review titled Playing it safe (10/8):

    So what went wrong with David Cameron?s speech? This was supposed to be the speech that ?sealed the deal?, the last big chance before the election to show Britain why it should vote for him rather than merely against Gordon Brown.

    He blew it.

    It was vague, woolly, bland, dull. Far from igniting with the passion of a moral cause, it read like a mechanical assembly of boxes to be ticked. There was hardly any sense of the urgent civilisational threats and challenges to this country.

    She then proceeds to eviscerate his speech in agonizing detail. Some excerpts:

    A statesman-in-waiting would have done what the government has so conspicuously failed to do…that is, explain to the mystified and dangerously apathetic or even hostile British people why this is not a faraway war in which we should never have got involved but one upon which the security of the region and the free world depends, and that we have to see it through however long it takes…

    As for the rest of the speech, parts of it were incoherent. He can?t be against big government but also ?the party of the NHS?. He can?t be for devolution and for the union which it is weakening. He can?t be for the minimum wage and also free up entrepreneurialism to create desperately needed jobs…

    Much of the rest was studiedly vague and took the form of empty statements that welfare dependency would end, people would be protected from crime and would get what they wanted from the school system…

    And that is what was missing from Cameron?s speech. It?s not that it was short on policy detail, which was not its role anyway. It?s that it didn?t tell us a story that made us say yes, this man really does grasp not just the economic debacle but the full extent of Britain?s cultural, moral and existential decline ? and that it is important that we elect him in order to reverse that decline. Instead, he played ultra-safe; and so we are left wondering even now whether he?s keeping his powder dry ? or whether there isn?t any powder there.

    Read it all, and also check out her earlier critical reports from the Conservative Party annual conference:

    David Blair (10/7)

    The elephants in the room at the Tory party conference (10/6)

    David Cameron and the spectre of ?President? Blair (10/5)

    Read and weep.

    • http://beaglescout.wordpress.com LJ “Beaglescout” Miller

      Of course what I wrote about was more of an easter egg hunt, to use a videogame reference.