SHOULD ANY of the contenders for the Tory party leadership be short on speech-writing skills, they could crib a few choice paragraphs from Tony Blair’s conference address. Handcrafted with the help of a professional, Alastair Campbell no less, it had elements to please most of the country, even those further to the right than the Prime Minister.

“Today is not the era of the big State but a strategic one: empowering, enabling, putting decision-making in the hands of people, not the government.” There is a sentiment to cheer any Conservative activist.

The audience in Blackpool would fully approve of the assertion that: “In the era of rapid globalisation, there is no mystery about what works: an open, liberal economy, prepared constantly to change to remain competitive.” The paragraphs on the need for more choice and more use of private sector providers in education and the NHS would sit well in any Conservative speech. So would the bit about getting “more people off benefit and into work”.

Only old-fashioned trade unionists and those opposed to the war in Iraq could take offence at what Mr Blair had to say on Tuesday. Which leaves many Tories thrashing around wondering how on earth they can position themselves to fight a prime minister who makes their speeches for them.

The answer is to go beyond the cleverly written words and the Clintonesque presentation and deal with the actuality. That should not be difficult in Blackpool. For while Mr Blair talked of the regeneration that has been taking place in Britain’s cities, such as Birmingham, Liverpool “or Glasgow’s magnificent Pacific Quay”, one can understand why the Labour Party has decided to shun its usual visit to Blackpool next year in preference for Manchester.

Blackpool does not fit with the rhetoric of Blair’s Britain. Despite its boast of 6.5 million visitors a year to its Pleasure Beach, it is a run-down, depressing place. The people there earn on average just £323.50 a week compared with the national average of £422.90 and their average lifespan is more than three years below the national average. The latest available figures show an astonishing 10,405 people claiming incapacity benefit, roughly 13 per cent of those of working age. The council’s website proclaims that “Blackpool will be a vibrant, inclusive, healthy, safe and prosperous town”. But it does not say when.

This week the only non-Labour member of the council executive resigned. Councillor Robert Wynne, a Liberal Democrat, said that the Labour majority “do not like it when I criticise their wasteful use of public money”. He added: “Hype and PR are being used to cover up for failure and drift.” It is not surprising that a Labour-controlled council should be following the example set by its party leadership. Mr Blair may believe his own hype but he has not achieved the changes that he set out to achieve. In his conference speech he boasted that: “By the end of 2008 for the first time in decades Britain will be investing twice as much in our schoolchildren and three times as much in the NHS than ten years before.” That in itself, however, is nothing to be proud of if the money does not deliver the results that the country wants.

Mr Blair is no newcomer to the job: he has been in it for eight years. Yet only this week he talks of the numbers on incapacity benefit as a Tory scandal, and that he will get round to publishing proposals to deal with them next month. He announces, as if it were a revelation, that: “We need a uniformed [police] presence on the streets in every community.”

The Conservative Party should not despair that it agrees with much of what Mr Blair says; what it needs to do is persuade the country that it can actually deliver on these aims rather than continue merely to repackage them and throw yet more cash at them. David Davis appears to have grasped this fact. Formally announcing his candidature for the leadership, he focused on the need for “radical reforms” to improve lives. While Mr Blair is still trying to kindle a feel-good factor, Mr Davis acknowledged that “People feel the country is going in the wrong direction”. Away from Mr Blair’s cappuccino culture, real people worry about sliding educational standards and a slowing economy in which it is almost impossible for a first-time buyer to climb on to the housing ladder without a generous hand-up from a wealthy parent; they fear filthy hospitals and an increasingly disaffected underclass.

Mr Davis has yet to spell out how he would deal with these issues but he seems to understand that the voters are seeing through the Government’s failure to deliver on its promises. David Cameron, however, launched his leadership campaign with the well-worn mantra that the Tory party had to change. “What we have to do is to make a change in culture and identity of the Conservative Party,” he said. Not a novel assessment of the situation and not one that should advance his cause as potential leader one jot.

Change for change’s sake is pointless. Looking younger, friendlier, more welcoming or whatever else Mr Cameron has in mind will not win votes from a country increasingly fed up with a leader who is intent on looking all those things, even if it means employing the services of a make-up artist.

What the next Tory leader has to be able to do is to convince the country that he — or she — can do better at delivering change, in the public services and in society, than has new Labour. On that measure, Mr Davis will take some beating.