Waiting for something

This was her moment to put aside the failures of the last election. The failure to achieve anything much on Brexit after a year and a half. And to set out her vision for what the future could and what it should be like. A vision of a positive future where the country can set its own path in the world. Make its own deals and cope with its own challenges. 

She could have said she was going to scrap HS2 and Hinkley point and use the money earmarked for those projects for new, affordable housing. That she was going to guarantee got built by using the land the government already owns to build new villages and new towns. Connected by new roads. To new hospitals and new {grammar?} schools. She was going to begin building tomorrow. And her new ‘minister for the creation new towns’ was starting right away.

She might even have realised that it was a Conservative conference so could put her hand into the foreign aid cookie jar for the rebuilding of hurricane flattened Commonwealth countries and for yet more house building in the UK. 

That would have been a start. with some more about reforms of university fees. and pricing of university courses. 

Some talk on taxation. More talk on jobs. Especially about the numbers already created and how the government wanted to tackle the loss of fair conditions at work for so many. 

A big bit on the divisive and troublesome Brexit. Not something any PM wold want to tackle head on in a hall split between leave and stay. But she did need to say over and over, we are leaving. the clock IS ticking. But she’s made her offer and awaits a proper EU response. And that sadly, we cannot wait forever. And if no significant movement had occurred by Christmas, then the following year would see a rapid expansion of the government in order to put in place the customs and border controls necessary for the first stage of our leaving without a deal. And leave the ball in the EU’s court.

Then the usual platitudes about the NHS. Working together. Fairer, stronger, faster, fatter, funkier or whatever focus grouped buzzword fit on the slogan.

Instead though. ..well…just ..more of May.  An edge tinker here. A worry about the cost of doing something there. A half promise, for sometime in the future, to do far less of something that Corbyn has already promised for all.

The problem for her wasn’t the unfunny heckler. The revamped ‘strong and stable’ sign falling off the wall. Or even her losing voice. It was that her voice didn’t have much to say. 

So here’s something Eisenhower did say.

Video highlights of the Tory conference.
Quango exclusive. Pass the Strepsils edition.