Anatole Kaletsky has a terrific piece on Dave's speech yesterday:

If Michael Foot’s 1983 election manifesto is now remembered as “the longest suicide note in history”, then Mr Cameron’s speech yesterday could be described as the “longest shopping list in history”. And what would inevitably follow if Mr Cameron became prime minister would be the biggest tax demands in history.

Consider just a few of the spending pledges made yesterday by Mr Cameron in a single speech: to lavish on the National Health Service whatever funding is needed and an absolute moratorium on spending cuts or hospital closures; more border controls and policemen; more support for faith schools; more prison building; more drug rehabilitation services; more defence spending, not just on body armour but also on military salaries, pensions and schools; more subsidies for childcare; more money for social workers and occupational therapists; more special schools. My list of the spending commitments in that one speech could go on and on — and I haven’t even started on the previous day’s promises from Mr Osborne, such as subsidising pensions with even more generous tax relief.

...Nowhere was there any sense of priorities, of the limits to government resources. Never did Mr Cameron hint, for example, that somebody would have to pay for such charming notions as a new childcare subsidy that would be paid not only to professional carers but also to grandparents.

Even more disconcertingly, for what was supposed to be an expression of the new Tory ideals of decentralisation and limited government, there was hardly a single example of government self-restraint to balance the dozens of new state initiatives.

It's a great vote winner, Dave:

Vote Conservative: bankrupt yourself and the country

Now that we've had the past 4 days of Cameroonism on display, we can see the sort of Britain Dave wants:

His speech yesterday was so depressing, with its kowtowing to every left liberal cliche and its utterly misguided wallowing in the supposed virtues of the public sector. Perhaps the most depressing thing of all was the Pavlovian reaction of the audience, applauding every vowel emanating from Dave's mouth, however much they would have jeered had the same sentiments come from Blair or, even more, Brown. Understandable, of course: they are so desperate for power that they'd have applauded, oh, IDS had he been ahead in the polls.

It's the same thing which was at work when Blair took over Labour: a party which would put up with anything if it promised power. But there is a big difference. Blair was forcing his party to rip up lunatic ideas and shift it towards accepting sensible ideas, such as that profit is a good thing and jobs are created by business. Cameron is doing the exact opposite. He is forcing his party to rip up sensible ideas and replace them with SDP manque mush.

I had dinner last night with an American (Democrat) friend. She's been following the conferences. As she asked me: "What's the point of the Conservatives now? They seem to have ditched everything they believe in and are claiming to be more New Labour than New Labour. But why would anyone vote for them and not the real thing?"

Well, there's the Gordie problem, of course. Given that we're not allowed to call him autistic now, let's just leave it at his psychological flaws. And the fact that he is unelectable.

So we are now faced with the wonderful prospect of a new New Labour Prime Minister being beaten at the next election by a new Conservative leader who has pledged to be more of a social democrat than the social democrat he has just beaten.

Anyone know when the last plane leaves Heathrow?