David Cameron sets out his credo for his country

David Cameron has written a piece for today's Daily Telegraph in which he summarises the principles and values that guide him and inform the policies which he would want to promote as Prime Minister.

The key passage is that in which he lists the set of beliefs which he developed after visiting the Soviet Union and an Eastern bloc in 1985 which, he writes, remain with him to this day:

"The state is your servant, never your master. It should defend people from every threat – but it should not use that as a premise to infringe unnecessarily on the freedom of the individual. As far as humanly possible, it should crush bureaucracy and hand power to the people. And the state should support wealth creation, aspiration and enterprise with low taxes, not replace it with grandiose five-year plans. Compassion is not just about what the State does on behalf of us all, it is about what we do as individuals, in our families, in our communities, together." 

He goes on to talk about the influences of his family upon him in giving him a sense of optimism, community, responsibility and obligation, and indeed of the importance of "the strength of a family". All these values, he concludes, are "instinctively Conservative".

Mr Cameron also writes about the need for leaders to have the right temperament. He again cites Margaret Thatcher's determination in taking on vested interests and attacks Tony Blair for being obsessed by the news cycle and Gordon Brown for using "crude party politics to calculate every decision". He promises that the Conservatives wiould govern differently:

"We will be quietly effective, getting on with things patiently and working hard to deliver real reforms... I can promise that you will get a different style of government from me. It will be a collegiate one, where the team I appoint are trusted to get on with the job; where cross-party consensus will be sought; where decisions are based on the national interest, not the political interest."

Jonathan Isaby