David Cameron: Britain needs change, not experience

These key extracts from David Cameron's speech has been pre-released:

“If we win, we will inherit a huge deficit and an economy in a mess. We will need to do difficult and unpopular things for the long term good of the country. I know that. I’m ready for that."

"There is a big argument I want to make - about the financial crisis and the economic downturn facing the country too. It’s an argument about experience. To do difficult things for the long-term, or even to get us through the financial crisis in the long term, it’s not experience we need - it’s character and judgment. To rebuild our economy, it’s not more of the same we need, but change.

"Experience is the argument of the incumbent over the ages. Experience is what they always say when they try to stop change."

POSTSCRIPT

The BBC has analysed the 400,000 words from the publicly-available speeches that David Cameron has made since he became leader in December 2005.  Read the analysis here but most notable is the consistency of his references to the NHS (and not to immigration) and the fact that Iain Duncan Smith gets more name checks than any other member of his team - a tribute to the importance of IDS' social justice agenda.

Comments

[GB£.com]

So according to the BBC's tag cloud, Cameron has never mentioned the word 'environment'.

[Dominic]

An excellent analysis by Richard North on EU REFERRENDUM http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/who like Lindsay Jenkins has pointed out we are in a European financial straightjacket. Will David Cameron cover Directive 2006/49/EC of 14 June 2006.That it is an EU directive, though, does not tell the whole story for it is this directive which implements crucial parts of the now notorious Basel II agreement. It is that agreement that which is the heart of the current problems which the banks are experiencing.. I hope when Nigel Farage appears on Question Time on Thursday he will be allowed to put over the financial restraints we will always face being a member of a Club that gives little benefit, where we are the second largest contributor, and yet not one person has ever put up a convincing financial argument for remaining.

[Norm Brainer]

environment 158
On the Full List

Is it me or does someone have too much time on their hands at the BBC?

[Dorian Grey]

Environment? In fact all thingies beginning with E such as…for example…er…Europe and England.

[Insider]

No-one, including the BBC, seems capable of spelling Willetts with two t's.

[RichardJ]

Let us hope Cameron's speech jacks up our poll lead.

[Empedocles]

Norm Brainer: "Is it me or does someone have too much time on their hands at the BBC?"

Without wanting to blind with science, all you need is a macro in Word. Does it all like magic. Computers, eh? What amazing new-fangled contraptions they are.

[James Maskell]

So this is an extension of his two speeches from yesterday and the day before?

With the main players having made their speeches, only a stunning speech from Cameron can persuade me to rejoin the Conservatives (and if it persuades me then it will be pretty damn good). I want to rejoin the Party and still hold some affection for it, but the Conservatives have to prove to me that they are more than a right wing party which shed its dirtier clothes to appeal to the more centrist voters, as Labour did, and that it has a genuine want to help the deprived of this country. Too much attention is spent persuading middle England (an understable strategy given the propensity for them to vote slightly right of centre, thus being the key group to aim for) when there are those worse off who have cause to believe that the Tories are still wedded to the middle class married 4.2 families who read the Express and the Times. Readers might not like that argument but policies on IHT and marriage guidance justifies such a view.

Its not about being Labour, because a Conservative direction can also be one that can really help the poor and needy as a key concern. Two examples of such failure to highlight these people have appeared this week. Michael Gove yet again failed to bring up the issue of children in care and with him talking about schools, it was an opportune moment to bring it up. Yes I bang on about it, but thats because these are people whose futures are in the hands of a bureaucracy. Lansley brought up mental health care but in passing when discussing mixed wards. It should be given more attention given the importance it plays in all our lives.

Its not about abandoning its key audience or message, its about showing that they genuinely care and I dont feel that the Conservatives have realised that yet. Perhaps Cameron might persuade me today. Unlikely but possible.

[David_at_Home]

If there is a banking crisis then why are HSBC shares the highest they have been this year and not that far off an all time high? Why too are the shares in the Standard Chartered bank up?

It is the badly managed banks that are failing and they should be allowed to fail like other poorly managed businesses. Furthermore, the directors should be held to account by the criminal justice system if they have been trading whilst insolvent or involved in false accounting.

On the wider issue of the economy it is easy to see from the increase in personal debt and the balance of payment deficit that we, as a country, have been living above our earning by around 5% for about 7 years. This is obviously unsustainable as is the doubling of house prices since Labour took power. So a recession is inevitable, there will have to be massive cuts in government expenditure and, quite possibly tax increases too to compensate for the falling tax take and incersing unemployment as the economy falters.

The pity is that none of our political leaders dare face the truth. But the truth is about to confront them.

[Mark Fulford]

James, I have a lot of sympathy with your argument. Ulimately, however, on Polling Day we are faced with a realistic choice of two. Inevitably I decide that Conservatives could be significantly better but Labour are significantly worse.

The flaw in our political system is that high profile politicians live in a world where all interaction is through the prism of media coverage. We do the voting but mostly it is the media who choose the issues and tell us how our MPs reacted. A rare exception is IDS, who is now managing to set his own agenda -- but he had to be spat out from the political mill first. David Davis tried but spectacularly failed.

The elephants in the room are many (perhaps it would make and interesting thread, Editor) but they do no exist until a camera points at them.

I am in the lens, therefore I am.

[Ken Stevens]

"..it’s not experience we need - it’s character and judgment.."

Agreed.

We seem to have got into the current mess because of actions/inactions by supposedly experienced folk, in business and in politics!

[christina Speight]

Dominic at 09:18 rightly draws attention to Richard North's seminal discussion of the most crucial question today - How to mend our banking system

The article is - as I expect from a such a source - immaculately researched and the centrality of its argument that the international system of asset valuation perpetuates a vicious circle which must be solved seems on the face of it to be widely accepted including by Cameron - though not acknowledged by Gordon Brown.

Such is the rigidity of all decision making processes [and even worse the rigidity of all decision AMENDing processes] in the EU that shifting EU policy on this may be impossible. But its very impossibility carries the clue to its solution. Mr North says “What he [Cameron] did not specify, however, was how he was going to "find a way through" the EU labyrinth to remove a damaging piece of legislation that is at the heart of this crisis.”

Since the future of our whole economic well-being [and incidentally of Europe too!] is at stake the moment is ripe for unilateral action. The EU will huff and puff for ages, but in the end will probably welcome Britain cutting the Gordian [Gordonian?] knot!

If they don’t, who cares? We've got to survive!

Please don't encourage Nigel Farage to join in this debate though . It would merely tgaint it as a "UKIP hobbyhorse" and EU-bashing and the people who need influencing would turn away in droves.

[passing leftie]

Elections are almost always fought on Change vs Experience. The "experienced" party attempts to malign the novices, sometimes by instilling fear (New Labour, New Danger, anyone)?

Usually, experience wins - that is until the electorate is sufficiently pissed off with the experienced party that their fear of change is overcome. Sometimes they punish a party and regret at leisure (Thatcher springs to mind).

Cameron is also managing expectations - playing up the supposed mess that he'll have been bequeathed so that he can take the credit if things turn out anything other than appallingly bad.

I do hope he personally has to deal with a crisis between now and the next election, so we can see what kind of a leader he actually is - his handling of grammar school debacle doesn't bode well.

[Ken Stevens]

passing leftie
"Sometimes they punish a party and regret at leisure (Thatcher springs to mind)."

Sometimes they punish a party and regret at leisure (Blair springs to mind)

I seem to recall that this gentleman and most of his ministers were also novices in 1997.
Was it a mistake to have elected them?

Answers on a postcard please.....

[Dorian Englandism]

While we are compiling wish lists for climactic speeches in desperate times.

Yes, agreed, cull the management consultants, quit the 'what a super government we are' advertising and then let’s decimate the entire civil service by audit as to purpose but before that, before any of that, let us show the lead by culling the politicians.

Here’s something cheap, elegant and ruthless:

Replace the Lords with a British senate consisting of no more than 100 senators – works for Uncle Sam with five times the population. That'll be 700 Lords a leaving.

Replace the Commons with a re-established English parliament and cancel all MPs in Scotland (they've got MSPs to do the representing) and likewise in NI and Wales.

Anyone up for it?

[Michael Parsons]

If the BBC have been searching for Theresa Villers, Carloline Spelman and Dave Willets, that obviously invalidates their figures!
Wasn't there a time when the BBC could be relied upon to get things right?

[GB£.com]

Of course we need change and experience, which Cameron could achieve by having a clearly experienced person as chancellor, as these are the two key roles.

Cameron is asking the public to take a gamble on both an inexperienced leader and chancellor and I can't help but think that in these turbulent times, such a gamble is unnecessarily risky and will cost the party votes.

[Ken Stevens]

GB£.com
"..achieve by having a clearly experienced person as chancellor..."

.. as long as you don't have in mind a suchlike someone of immense talent, personality and experience but, alas, who does not wish to retain the GB£!

[David_at_Home]

Gordon Brown has lots of experience – experience of floating a pseudo economy on a bubble of debt.

David Cameron and George Osborne have, between them, no experience of anything at all; neither has ever held a proper job or achieved anything outside politics.

Can we really find no-one better to run this poor knackered country?

[Lindsay Jenkins]

Judgement derives from both character and experience. Cameron is wrong to suggest that experience isn’t key. It is.

Sadly he cannot get away from the fact that he and most of his team lack experience, especially experience outside politics.

British government suffers from the dominance of the EU. This applies to the banking crisis too. Tim Congdon has just written an excellent pamphlet, Northern Rock and the European Union, which can be downloaded, highlighting the impact of the EU.

Many of us have stressed the damage being done by EU directives on the City yet Conservative MEPs have largely voted for them. Theresa Villiers when an MEP and leading on financial affairs congratulated the Commission on the proposed Single Financial Market and lauded the Market Abuse Directive and all the rest.

It is those 40 plus directives of the Single Financial Market, which are now costing us so dear.

Yet the Single Financial Market has been Conservative policy. Will it remain so? And if not how does an incoming Conservative government propose to reverse it? Is that the change Cameron is proposing?

[GB£.com]

LoL Ken, absolutely not! :-)

[christina Speight]

To many of us to boast that experience isn't important is a crass thing to say. The whole Tory party machinery seems bogged down in teenage scribbler theorists.

Of course,experience isn;t the ONLY thing and when one contestant has little experience of anything but is intelligent I would prefer that to someone who has lots of experience of causing non-stop disasters to our economy. I call that a virus.

We'll have to see if Cameron IS intelligent - there have been a few straws in the wind that he might at last be waking from his long touchy-feely dream.

[David (One of many)]

"Sadly he cannot get away from the fact that he and most of his team lack experience, especially experience outside politics."

That really isn't true. Compare the Shadow Cabinet with either Cabinet or the Lib Dem team and you'll find a wealth of experience outside politics. Yes, there are some in there who have always been involved, but they are in the minority.

[cosmic]

"Britain needs change, not experience"

Firstly, experience is always there in the shape of the Civil Service, which is a part of government which never gets voted out.

Secondly, experience is only valuable, if it's quality experience; if it's experience from a history of messing up, lying and dangerous meddling, it's not worth considering.

I'd say what's more important for Cameron is having and communicating a clear view of where we are now, a clear view of where we want to be and an outline explanation of how we get there, through measures people can see will be effective.

What I see so far is that DC intends to manage the muddle in a slightly more Conservative way. It's the same old muddle.

[Notice To All Lower Forms & Exchange Students!]

Be aware! Those of you in the lower classes will be expected to bend over and smile whenever Cameron steals your lunch money, throughout this coming term.

Otherwise, Boris Johnson, and other such solid chaps from the Bullyboydom Club, will drag you in front of the House of Lords and give you such a wedgying that no amount of compensation will ever bring back those precious family jewels.

(New pupils should speak to miners from previous years)