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Gloom descends over Bournemouth
Edward Davie
Since Sunday the Conservatives have been trying to control the political weather with David Cameron declaring "let sunshine win the day", at which point the heavens opened and 24 hours of torrential rain drenched the south coast.
Since then the weather (the climatic variety) has improved dramatically, but have things got better for the Conservative leadership?
Cameron has defended his frontbench team's refusal to commit the party to any firm policies by saying the process is "like building a house: first you prepare the ground, then you lay the foundations then you start building the walls."
Well, if in preparing the ground you need a flat surface then he has achieved something - most observers have agreed this gathering has been distinctly flat.
Perhaps it's because a lot of the hacks have come from the fireworks of the Labour conference and the preceding weeks of drama but even the delegates seem a little underwhelmed.
One frontbench spokesman after another has come to the platform and failed to really define what the Conservative Party is for.
The party leadership is not about explicitly committing itself to cutting taxes – something most delegates seem pretty miffed by.
Edward Leigh, among others, has tried to up the ante, claiming 100 of his fellow backbenchers want a promise to cut tax.
If the leadership is trying to draw the right into a scrap to prove how they have changed this may not have been the ground they would have wanted.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne's speech, meanwhile, was well received, being stronger on Labour-bashing and sounding more traditional than Cameron but still a defence of the 'no tax cut' promise.
Defence secretary Liam Fox and foreign secretary William Hague also went down well but other than fine words about "brave boys" it was similarly light on real policy.
When there isn't any policy the press will look elsewhere for a story and you never need look much further than Boris Johnson.
The day after the conference voted to ban junk food advertising aimed at children, Johnson backed parents "pushing pies through railings" as he said healthy eating campaigns have gone too far.
It's just lucky the junk food ad ban wasn't a real policy anyway.
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Published: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 17:42:52 GMT+01
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