Conservatives party conference: Cameron remains rooted in rhetoric

CONSERVATIVE leader David Cameron closed this year's party conference in Manchester amid the widely held view that he will be Prime Minister at the next one.

Buoyed by month after month of strong opinion poll leads, it is indeed now difficult to imagine anything other than victory for Mr Cameron at next year's general election.

A poll just before the conference gave the Tories a lead of 14 points over Labour and the message to the delegates was to try not to look too triumphalist.

It was not something the attendees were used to hearing after 12 years of opposition.

But the week was not without its difficulties. The thorny issue of Europe has often divided the party in the past and it threatened to do so again.

In 2001, William Hague focused his election strategy on the ill-advised 'Save the Pound' campaign.

Further back, John Major called a vote of confidence in himself after he lost a vote in the Commons on the Maastricht Treaty to the party's Eurosceptics in 1993.

This time, there was a lack of direction from the top brass over the Lisbon Treaty.

Their current position - to hold a referendum if the treaty has not been ratified by all 27 EU members -holds little water after the Irish voted 'Yes' and the Poles and Czechs are set to follow.

There has been nothing forthcoming on what their new policy will be and a lack of policy generally remains a criticism of the revamped Tories.

It was evident again in the keynote speech by Mr Cameron. Unsurprisingly, his focus was on the broken society after more than a decade of Labour government.

That was fair enough given the current state of the country but Mr Cameron offered few concrete solutions.

Instead he preferred to recount the usual emotive tales of pensioners struggling to keep warm and a man called Viv who was denied work because of the ridiculous benefits system.

Mr Cameron even found time to include Fiona Pilkington's recent tragic story.

Ms Pilkington killed herself and her daughter after years of bullying from local youths but the mention of it in a conference speech seemed misplaced.

BBC correspondent Ben Wright wrote that it echoed when Tony Blair referred to the death of James Bulger in a speech shortly before gaining power.

Indeed, much of the speech echoed the build up to 1997 when Mr Blair made one promise after another without committing to specific policies.

A major difference, however, is that at that stage Mr Blair was regularly polling at 50% and more, while current polls put the Tories nearer 40%.

The feeling remains that the government will lose the election rather than the Tories winning it on the back of a huge swathe of popularity.

The reason for that to me is clear - Mr Cameron has yet to commit to many policies - he has no policies for which to like or dislike him.

Indeed he admitted in this latest speech that he favours personality politics and considers policy to be secondary.

"It's your character, your temperament and your judgment - not your policies and your manifesto - that really make the difference," he said.

Nevertheless, the polls still give Mr Cameron a comfortable majority of between 50 and 100 seats.

It seems unfeasible that he will not be the next UK Prime Minister in 2010 - but with what direction?

Quite frankly, the answer remains as clear as mud.