Stakeholder

I was at the Conservative Party conference last week – the first I have attended in 10 years – but don’t worry, I did not sign up. Though my political enemies would probably regard me as a ‘green Tory’.

Party conferences of the opposition are not terribly interesting. Frankly, where there is no power, there is no point.

This year the Tories are on the cusp of defeating a Labour Party that looks increasingly like a beleaguered and battered cruiser trying to reach the safe haven of a port.

In purely practical terms, the Conservative Party needs a seismic shift in political allegiances to overtake Labour and it will take a landslide to give them a reasonable majority. Both now look likely.

Yet one got a sense that euphoria has not quite set in amongst the Tory faithful who appear somewhat wary of a Labour Party that finished the careers of four Conservative leaders.

The week before the limelight was stolen by the camp and theatrical performance of Peter Mandelson. Self-deprecating humour as expressed by politicians, even those as unloved as Mandelson, is always lapped up gratefully by bored conference delegates but Labour delegates seemed resigned to their fate. Brown did not make the speech of his political life as his heir presumptive, Alan Johnson, suggested. Brown laboured through his speech and there was nothing new to present. His rally call is simple: Britain will be a fairer place under Labour. He is probably right but no-one is in the mood for listening. Some of the Labour rats have already jumped ship while others are lobbying to get a soft landing by entering the House of Lords.

In Labour the mantra seems be everyone for him or herself.

For the Tories that has always been the mantra.

Back in grim Manchester, Cameron had warned that conference receptions should not be champagne-swilling events. He was obviously concerned about the impact of negative media images of champagne flutes overflowing with Dom Perignon held by well-heeled, bumbling young ‘Hooray Henrys and Henriettas’ singing Rule Britannia and handing out copies of Fox and Hound. He need not have worried.

The only such photo which appeared was of him – replete with champagne flute in hand. The habits of a Bullingdon boy must be hard to shake off.

To see Cameron as a multi-millionaire Tory toff from a privileged background with an elitist education is slightly unfair. That he is of that background, there is no denying and he is not denying it.

But wealth and privilege are only part of his makeup.

The images of him with his children seem real and natural. They don’t look staged. The care and attention he and his wife gave to his late son was inspiring to many families who cherish and rear children with severe disabilities.

Cameron is not a one-dimensional politician. He is not a one-dimensional man. The cards dealt to him in life contained the mix of good and bad that are dealt to many others. That he was the beneficiary of much is true and as such of those to whom much is given, much more is expected.

Cameron’s front-benchers like William Hague and George Osborne have more than a little of the night about them. Hague, while undoubtedly talented, has already been rejected by the British electorate but he still comes across as some kind of political Seed of Chucky but, in his case, Thatcher.

Osborne just is not convincing as a caring Cameron Conservative.

Osborne has none of Cameron’s skill of portraying himself as either personable or ordinary.

He still seems the kind of chap who is more at home in the Royal Enclosure at Ascot or riding out with the local Harriers.

Cameron is a formidable politician as he has invented himself. He is much more popular than his party and the startling revelation in a British establishment newspaper that 68 per cent of the British public don’t believe that the Tories have changed is staggering after a 12-year absence from government.

The speech he gave to the conference was impressive as the speaker shared a bit of his person with not just delegates but viewers at home.

It probably did not help that his caring image was somewhat blunted with Osborne’s early targeting of some four million public sector workers earning over £18,000 a year.

If the Tory strategy is to target middle earners, they will learn very quickly that we are not all in this together.