Yesterday, The Times threw down the gauntlet to the Conservative Party, telling us to prove that we are worth not only our opinion poll lead, but of government too. That's fine by me - the more people look at the arguments we are making, the policies we are developing and the vision we are offering, the more they will understand the scale of change we will bring and the coherent set of political ideas on which it will be based.

Let me start by saying where I agree with this newspaper - the public is tired of this Government. This isn't to do with the electoral cycle. It's to do with the “new Labour” project itself. This was always a communications strategy more than a governing one. Labour said that it would combine social justice and economic efficiency. The trouble was that it never explained how it would do it. Why did the 10p tax row do such damage to Gordon Brown's reputation? Was it the sheer incompetence of a Budget unravelling before everyone's eyes? Of course. Was it that it exposed the terrible truth that, after ten years of a Labour government, severe poverty has actually risen? Definitely. But above all it was because of the cynicism of hurting the poor for the sake of a cheap “Brown the tax-cutter” headline.

No proper plan or focus - it's no wonder, 11 years on, that precious little has been achieved. So we have learnt the lessons. To begin with, our policies won't be governed by what makes a good headline. They'll be serious and for the long term.

That's precisely why we are setting the agenda in so many areas: measuring outcomes, not processes in the health service; sharing the proceeds of growth in our economy; putting rocket boosters behind renewable energy; having a border police force; the importance of wellbeing and quality-of-life issues.

But we are not just setting the agenda today - we have an inspiring vision for tomorrow too. The aim of the Conservative Party is nothing short of building the good society. We will be as radical in social reform as Margaret Thatcher was in economic reform.

Why? Because our society is broken. Crime, drugs and incivility blight so many communities. For millions, opportunity is stalled. There is a sense that, despite all the amazing opportunities of modern Britain, life can be pretty grim.

Lifting up our society is the great task for the next Conservative government - not just because it's both morally and socially right, but because, in these troubled economic times, when families are suffering from the rising cost of living, getting our society right means getting our economy right. Tackling joblessness, getting people off drugs, putting children on the straight and narrow - these are the only long-term, sustainable way of cutting the cost of social failure and bringing down taxes and the cost of living.

How exactly are we going to do it? At our conference last October, we set out three agendas - for opportunity, responsibility and security. These aren't plucked from thin air. They are all intimately connected to one another. If you give people more opportunity and power over their lives, they will behave more responsibly. A society where people are more responsible will be more secure. And a more secure society provides a stronger platform for individual opportunity.

Let me give you two examples of how this virtuous circle can work. We will give parents the power to set up new schools. Once parents are more closely involved in how their child's school is run, they will take more responsibility for making sure it is a success. That will drive standards up and provide our society with the economic and social security that a skilled workforce brings.

The same goes for welfare reform. We will give more power to charities and social enterprises that really know how to get people into work - paying them for their success. Armed with this power, they will have a greater stake in - and a greater responsibility for - making success. And their success will mean more people moving from long-term poverty to long-term employment.

This is the driving force behind all our reforms. Our green papers on schools, welfare, decentralised energy, prisons and the not-for-profit sector are designed for what I call the post-bureaucratic age, in which the information revolution can give real power and control to individuals in a way we have never seen before.

We can book a tailor-made holiday on the other side of the world at a click of a button. Social networking can drive the environmental agenda. And Google can tell us more about our illness than our doctors. Yet we still have a government wedded to top-down state control. The future is people-led. Politics must respond - and with the Conservatives, it will.

That is the choice in British politics today. On one side an exhausted government that never had a plan and is now bereft of energy and completely out of touch with how the world is changing. On the other, the Conservatives, with a coherent vision and a focused set of priorities - but most importantly, a proper idea of how we will achieve them.

David Cameron is leader of the Conservative Party

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