Malcolm Dunn watches Newsnight cover the leader's speech

As someone who watched much of the conference through the eyes of the BBC I looked forward to reviewing Newsnight's coverage of David Camerons speech and the last day of the conference with some trepidation. Some of the BBC coverage has been good but some utterly lamentable.

Newsnight started well, Gavin Esler was the presenter so we were spared the supercilious tones of dear old Paxo. Esler stated at the beginning that a leaders speech had two objectives.  The first was to encourage non-Tories to look at the Conservative Party again and secondly ‘to cheer up the troops’. Esler said he thought Cameron that Cameron had achieved both.

There followed a very short ‘highlights’ of the speech itself. This concentrated on Camerons thoughts about the NHS, marriage, the Armed forces and the optimistic finale. The BBC true to form panned the camera to three old buffers who appeared to be the only people in the hall not clapping when DC spoke approvingly of same sex marriages.

Following the coverage of the speech, Newsnight asked various activists for their reactions (all positive) and equally importantly who they wanted to succeed Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party. The answer - perhaps surprisingly - was unaminous - Gordon Brown! Newsnight then showed a rolling poll of people's reactions to Camerons speech and compared it with Brown's speech to the Labour conference. Brown's speech appealed to committed Labour voters, Cameron's to everybody.

The Newsnight panel were then rolled out. Daniel Finkelstein represented the Conservative interest, Peter Heyman for Labour and Oli Grender for the Lib Dems.

Fink as you would expect was very supportive, Heyman also praised the speech but accused Cameron of aping Tony Blair. Oli Grender then tried to make capital for the Liberals by saying that this conference hadn’t succeeded because there had been no big fights or arguments! The other two then ganged up on her and both said the Liberal conference had been a disaster because Ming had survived and Ming was a real negative for the Lib Dems!

All in all this was one of the most positive Newsnights I have seen for the Conservative Party in months. Together with TV and Radio coverage of the conference I think we can conclude that today was a good day for Cameron and the Conservative party in general.

Comments

[RodS]

The fact that Newsnight was supportive shows how far Camerons speech was marketing hype rather than core principle. When read line by line on the web rather than with the presentational gloss, it was vapid and contradictory - even if all the delegates in the hall wet themselves. I can only hope that it was intended for Newsnight and the BBC, and he doesn't actually believe any of it.

[NigelC]

Phase 1 - making it socially acceptable to talk about voting Tory - seems to have been successful.
We await Phase 2- policies - with eager anticipation

[EVT]

"The BBC true to form panned the camera to three old buffers who appeared to be the only people in the hall not clapping when DC spoke approvingly of same sex marriages."

I don't approve of same sex 'Marriages'and I'm a 23 year-old athiest.

I'm sick of being patronised by the New-Tory Whigs.

[Matt Wright]

The speech was aimed at the centre ground where most voters reside. It began to map out the route rather than set out policies. It continued to present a new more caring image to overcome old perceptions of the Conservative party. The big idea was social responsibility (in fact a continuation of a good theme brought upto date).