Paul Johnston

A photo of David Cameron's speech at Blackpool. Had I gone to it this would have been the 26th Conservative Conference I had attended, starting in 1962 at Llandudno when the issue of the hour was whether or not to support Harold Macmillan's belated bid for Britain to join the EEC. The party was pretty divided on the issue and representatives went around with 'YES' or 'NO' written on their conference badges for days before the big debate. The issue was settled by a big speech from the Lord Privy Seal, one Edward Heath, who was i/c the negotiations.

My first Blackpool conference was in 1963 when Harold Macmillan announced his resignation from the Premiership and a leadership battle started in the Conference itself. The main contenders were Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham) and R. A. Butler. Again people festooned their badges with 'QMH' or 'RAB' according to taste. The issue was settled partly by a very poor speech made by RAB in Macmillan's absence. The succession went to neither main contender, but to the Earl of Home, who quickly became Sir Alec Douglas-Home MP. Incidentally he was the last Scotsman representing a Scottish constituency to be PM until Gordon Brown - who looks now like being PM for longer than the one year of Sir Alec's tenure - but not much more!

Last week was easily as historic as either of the other two. Whatever he says Brown was fixed on an early election, which he has now called off. He has done so because the Blackpool conference has led him to believe that the Conservative party is more ready for a fight - and in a better shape to win it - than either he or they imagined. The work of Cameron's review groups was introduced and discussed. Some ideas were accepted and some not. The whole thing was tied together brilliantly by DC himself in one of the greatest Conference speeches I have ever heard in all these years. He outlined a programme of policies which was coherent and which put the 'modernising' tendancy into context, showing how it was compatible with traditional Conservative ideas. Thus it bound the party together while at the same time really making clear the contrast with Brown and Labour. They at Bournemouth had little of relevance to say about any of the issues we face as a country except that they want to smash the Tory Party.

I have hitherto been a 'Cameron sceptic' - but I no longer am!

I've seen it coming for years. It was pretty obvious after the 2005 General Election that the Conservative Party had taken Iain Duncan Smith to its heart after he ceased to be Leader far more than it ever did while he was Leader. I was in the hall in Blackpool four years ago when he was given 18 standing ovations for his last Leader's speech a matter of weeks before the Parliamentary Party turfed him out of office to replace him with Michael Howard.

A lesser man might have got all wounded and slunk off into the undergrowth. But IDS didn't do that. With and through his Commission for Social Justice he has transformed the way the Conservative Party looks at social deprivation and our broken society in a way I would scarcely have thought possible five years ago. He has got out there among the volunteers who try to help the vulnerable make something worthwhile out of what might otherwise have been lives which too many of our young citizens now lead - in Hobbes's words 'nasty, brutish and short.' And he has brought in the volunteers and the vulnerable to address the Party Conference in person or on video. The result is that, so unlike the other Conferences, this Conservative Conference has faced the real problems of real people (and the people themselves) and pledged its support.

This afternoon the Conference gave IDS the longest and most heartfelt ovation of the week so far - not because it was orchestrated but because it wanted to. Not bad for 'a quiet man'.

George Osborne gave a very good speech in Blackpool yesterday - the best by far I have heard from him. What was particularly good was the way he affirmed his attachment to Tory values with the pledges on abolition of Inheritance Tax on estates under £1m and Stamp Duty on house purchases under £250k.

You may say these commitments are overdue. I would say they need to be the first of many. Above all the ghastly Tax Credit benefit system - Gordon's very own invention - needs to be replaced by something simpler to operate and not designed to cause maximum misery by paying people too much and then trying to claw it back when they've spent the money.

Anyway, George has managed to scare Gordon so much that he felt he needed a photo op in Iraq to recover and - typically - to grab a headline by announcing the imminent return of 1,000 soldiers..........half of whom came home weeks ago!! What would Daddy have thought about whoppers like that?

It would appear that David Willetts has stirred up a hornet's nest by suggesting in a speech this morning that the Conservative Party has fallen out of love with grammar schools. To read the speeck go to www.conservatives.com .

I think David Willetts could achieve a great deal by taking into his confidence the leaders of the many Conservative Council groups who have steadfastly supported their local grammar schools over decades of sustained attack on them from the Left. This would include our Leader in Kingston. He should not be making speeches which are open to cries from the Left of 'told you so. We were right all along.' He might have realised what deep dismay this would cause and how much it would reinforce the view that our present leadership likes nothing so much as causing needless dismay to the party's long term supporters.

There is no necessary contradiction between supporting Academies - which are after all Thatcher's GM schools/ City academies by another name - and allowing local authorities to reintroduce or maintain selection on academic grounds. What we can all join forces on is the fight against the central tenet of the 60s and 70s Comprehensive era, that one size can be made to fit all in the field of secondary education.