The Tory conference opens with a bang with Dave facing a grilling by Marr, while wriggling around doing the EU referendum shuffle. Cameron has to prove he's a man who can. Faced with smug Brown it shouldn't be too difficult.
The top picture, taken from BBC On-Line news, says it all. Brown's satisfaction after the Irish were duped and blackmailed to say 'yes'. Smug, arrogant with more than a hint of petulance. Fight tooth and nail sure, but Cameron's Tories will have to face Euro reality sometime.
Under a dirty tricks banner of 'recovery or ruin', the choice was spun as a vote over leaving the EU or accepting the new treaty. False hope won, paving the way for warmongering Blair to massage his ego and bank balance, presiding over an EU superstate, where democracy plays second fiddle to grandstanding power politics.
But the politics of false hope are coming to an end. The illusion of dreams are being shattered by doses of reality, after years of a political narrative that conned the country during the Blair years.
Irish ayes are smiling sure but all eyes turn to cool Cameron. The Orange Party's big concern is whether the heir to Blair will turn into the man himself. Talking the talk, walking the walk, all things to all men. All style and no substance. Voters remain unconvinced.
In the US, where Obama and Blair were born in the same stable, Americans are starting to see through the con of a slick snake-oil salesman. Promising the earth and delivering nothing as the shine wears off and reality kicks in. Mr Ambition must not make the same mistake.
At the heart is the vexed question of the economy. That means jobs and a grotesque national debt which has become a carbuncle on the face of the country. Belts have to be tightened. The public is savvy enough to understand the Thatcher housewife rather than Brown sauce.
Increasing taxes to hit well-off Peter to pay poor Paul are fine up to a point. But for many it's galling when the government has frittered away the country's wealth to create a false sense of security, leaving behind a legacy of insecurity.
Will voters put up with Cohen's Etonians? Will 'liberal' England turn its back on a so-called Labour Party and put its faith in the once despised ruling class? New Labour is flogging a dead horse with its 'Tory Toffs' line. People don't give a monkeys as long as a trusted soul gets to grips with a country in the grips of a social and economic crisis.
It took a long while for the harsh truth to sink in. A bunch of woolly thinking 'social democrats' and their cronies highjacked a traditional political party for their own selfish ends.
The public have been living in La-La Land in a cosy 'liberal' unreal world, now they're waking up. Shallowness reveals a rotten inside. A worm in the bud, corrupt to the core.
A decade of failed New Labour policies have taken their toll. The public is weary. The economy has been ruined. All that's left are the failed policies of a fag-end government with a lame duck leader. But to pull it off Cameron has to stand and deliver bold, radical alternatives. A breath of fresh air.
Cameron sets off to the Tory conference like Thatcher in '78, just months before an election. A point not missed on Oborne writing in the Mail: "The similarities are uncanny." This is not Blair '97, he argues, more Thatcher '78. Cameron has to contact and convince that the Tories are up to the job of turning things around and confronting the decade of inherited failures.
Dave has to be honest. Tell it how it is. Let voters decide. And don't for one minute try to hood wink voters. They've has a decade of lies, spin and deceit from the current bunch of ruling political elite.
How refreshing if Cameron can pull it off. That's why the Sun's backing Dave. That's why it gets the goat of the Gang of Four. At Brighton on the Rocks, shameful Brown was set on saving his skin with rehashed policies to pick up a few votes. But the 'underdogs' turned into dead dogs with a toothless biteback. In the end, it's Brown wot lost it.
The sham of the 'politics of hope' will take time to unravel into reality. It falls to Cameron, to spell out the grim financial realities that await the country over the next few years.
The New Labour government with its vast army of cronies and hangers on has shown itself incapable of dealing with the problems which beset the country. As David Blackburn points out in the Spectator, with the politics of hope dead, Cameron has everything to gain by being realistic.
No pain, no gain. But can Cameron tell voters what he stands for and where he stands? Voters are no fools. Ordinary folk are biding their time before reality kicks in. That reality won't go away, despite New Labour's cunning plan to use dead 'hope' to dupe the public into living longer in La-La land.
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