Full text of Cameron's speech

David Cameron told the country yesterday that he had the judgment, character and leadership to rebuild its battered economy and mend its broken society.

In his speech to a Tory conference dominated by the financial crisis, Mr Cameron presented himself as a conviction politician ready to take the difficult and unpopular decisions to guide Britain to better times after inheriting a huge deficit and an economic mess. He countered directly Gordon Brown’s claim that he was “a novice” by declaring that only change, not more of the same, could repair the country’s ills.

Character and judgment mattered more than experience, he told cheering activists, and that if Mr Brown’s argument was taken to a conclusion, Margaret Thatcher would never have been Prime Minister and Mr Brown would go on for ever.

Mr Cameron’s hour-long speech was adjusted shortly before he delivered it to reflect the gravity of the world financial situation. He delighted his audience by invoking the spirit of Thatcherism and talking of the government’s duty to ensure sound money and low taxes. But a Cameron administration’s priority would be to rein in Government borrowing and spending, not to cut taxes.

He would have the “grit and determination” to impose discipline on government spending, keeping his nerve and saying “no” even in the teeth of hostility and protest.

It was a speech touched by realism and optimism. Mr Cameron said that he could promise “no new dawns, no overnight transformations, no miracle cure”. But what he could offer was the leadership to unite his party and build a strong team, the character “to stick to \ guns and not bottle it” when times got tough, and the judgment to understand the mistakes that had been made and to offer change.

Challenging Mr Brown’s claim that he was too inexperienced to handle a crisis, Mr Cameron said that Britain needed “a change in direction”. He said: “The risk is not in making a change. The risk is sticking with what you’ve got and expecting a different result.” It was a personal speech, reflecting Mr Cameron’s core values of family, public service and social responsibility, one in which he accepted that he was trying to show that he was up to leading the country. He was not a libertarian, he said. He would trust his principles, his judgment and his colleagues. He would be guided by conviction, not calculation.

He stressed his belief in the Union, saying: “I do not want to be Prime Minister of England. I want to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.”

Unlike previous years, when he paced around the platform, Mr Cameron spoke from a lectern, displaying a more sober image. His open attacks on the Prime Minister were muted in the spirit of his offer of bipartisan support during the crisis, but his words about his own qualities were clearly designed to point to some of Mr Brown’s unfavourable characteristics.

He did accuse Mr Brown of having turned into a “spendaholic”, borrowing money in the good times when he should have been saving it.

He promised to campaign in next year’s European elections for a referendum on Europe’s constitution. In a pitch at Middle Britain, he tilted at the bureaucratic complaints procedures in the health service, pledged to back marriage in the tax system, and to go to war against the “dreadful practice of dumbing down” in education.

Mr Cameron said he would attack those parts of the educational establishment that still clung to the cruel “all must win prizes” philosophy.

He lambasted Labour’s claim that in times of difficulty there should be a bigger state. For Labour there was only the State and the individual, nothing in between. “No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No one but the minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society. Just them and their laws and their rules and their arrogance. You cannot run a country like this.”

He restated his charge that Britain had become a “broken society” because of violent crime, antisocial behaviour and an “angry, harsh culture of incivility”.

Rejecting Labour claims that the Conservatives were an “anti-state party”, he said that the “central task” for a Tory government under his leadership would be social reform as radical as the economic reforms introduced by Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s. His approach to this would centre on the family, which was “the best welfare system there is”.

Describing himself as a “41-year-old father of three who thinks that family is the most important thing there is”, he referred several times to his wife, Samantha, and their children.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said that Mr Cameron had shown the “character, leadership and judgment” to lead the country.

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend