Tory election: victory for the blank slate

David Cameron trounced rival David Davis in the MPs' vote for the Conservative leadership. Nobody seems to know exactly what he stands for - which is exactly what makes him so attractive.

Cameron's policies, where he's stated them, seem little different to those of Tony Blair: 'To be attractive, our programme must be balanced, compassionate and modern: balanced in the sense of improving the quality of life as well as creating prosperity; compassionate in the sense of helping people in Britain and the world who are least able to help themselves; modern in the sense of recognising the challenges of today's Britain and offering effective solutions.'

This is the kind of vacuous guff that Blair has practically copyrighted. But in a political environment where big ideas are largely absent, that is not a problem. By being largely unknown and relatively young, Cameron can be an empty vessel into which all the hopes of the party can be poured.

As long as his buzzwords are 'change' and 'a new party', he can be the recipient of votes from all those people who don't know what they want, but know they don't want the past. Cameron, unburdened by conviction or principle, does not offer much hope of a vigorous rebirth of politics in the future. He is, however, the poster boy for the empty, pointless politics of the present.

Policy programme, David Cameron, Daily Telegraph, 10 October 2005

Wake up, the Tories are telling us something, by Mick Hume, spiked