Britain: The Tory leader's speech may have pleased the party faithful, but it could be his last hurrah, writes Frank Millar
Mr Iain Duncan Smith turned up the volume if not the passion yesterday with a long, slow, somewhat stilted conference speech unlikely to quell speculation about a challenge to his leadership.
Stage managers encouraged the Conservative faithful to 19 or 20 standing ovations for a leader's speech characterised by jarring personal attacks on the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, and a defiant assertion from Mr Duncan Smith that he would not "allow anything or anyone" to get in the way of his mission to take his party back into government.
However, as he journeyed back from the Tories' annual conference in Blackpool last night, Mr Duncan Smith might ruefully have reflected that "the faithful" had similarly (and with considerably more genuine belief) cheered Margaret Thatcher to the rafters for her conference oration just two months before her expulsion from power in 1990. And as The Sun's respected political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, reported plotting Tory MPs taking £50 bets that there would be a "no confidence" tilt before Christmas, Ms Julie Kirkbride MP confirmed everything would now turn on the public reaction and the evidence of the polls.
While awaiting the public's verdict, sober reflection on this conference performance was also prompting questions about Mr Duncan Smith's use of a personal tragedy - the suicide of Dr David Kelly - to accuse Mr Blair of lying and to skip fairly quickly over the embarrassing fact that he himself had enthusiastically supported the war in Iraq. Eyebrows were also raised when this putative prime-minister-in-waiting used an attack on Liberal Democrat enthusiasm for high taxes as cover for a barely coded reference to Mr Kennedy's fondness for a drink.
Such knockabout stuff from lesser mortals might raise a laugh on the conference fringe but it sat uncomfortably with Mr Duncan Smith's presentation of himself as statesman for whom telling the truth and being honest was "above all else".
If less bothered about that, some Tory insiders were left gasping just seconds into the speech when Mr Duncan Smith recalled the 2001 election defeat, the resignation of William Hague and the fact that many were then writing off the party as a serious force.
"I knew that unless we could define what we stood for, unless we could find policies that would benefit everyone in our country, no one would even listen to us," he said, before adding this breath-taking assertion: "Well, today, I have delivered. I stand before you with the most radical policy agenda of any party aspiring to government since 1979."
Having last year declared himself "the quiet man" of British politics, he certainly wasn't adding "most modest" to the list. With his cultivated air of sincerity he certainly looked as if he believed this, although it was hard to imagine anyone else could.
True, this week's conference has surprised with a few eye-catching proposals for patient and pupil "passports" extending choice in the public services and to deport asylum-seekers to some faraway island (not yet identified by shadow home secretary Mr Oliver Letwin). But they hardly add up to a costed programme for government entitling Mr Duncan Smith to claim the mantle of Margaret Thatcher. Indeed as he confirmed yesterday that his government would cut taxes, thoughts turned to shadow chancellor Mr Michael Howard's determined effort this week to avoid being locked into any specifics.
The real difficulty was to take seriously Mr Duncan Smith's description of anything that might be done by a government led by him, given that this week's policy developments have been eclipsed by the growing rumour of a plot to ditch him within weeks of parliament's return.
Conference cheered when he declared his mission - to "destroy this double-dealing, deceitful, incompetent, shallow, inefficient, ineffective, corrupt, mendacious, fraudulent, shame- ful, lying government once and for all".
Doubtful Tory MPs were hardly instantly converted as he told them: "You either want my mission or you want Tony Blair. There is no third way."
And it was hard to imagine a trembling inside 10 Downing Street as he delivered this message to the Prime Minister: "The quiet man is here to stay and he's turning up the volume."
The Tory leader has reportedly had a costly makeover, but if that's the quality of sound-bite you get for your money these days, many will think the party was robbed.
Party chairman Mrs Theresa May said earlier this week that the voice coaching had been a success, although Mr Duncan Smith was still struggling to clear his throat.
They'd obviously been to the same coach for, like Mrs May on Monday, the leader yesterday delivered some of his presumably most important lines in the deliberate manner of a teacher addressing pupils with learning difficulties.
"We . . . are . . . going . . . after . . . them . . ." he intoned as he declared the Liberal Democrats unfit for government. (This struck as a quite unintentional acknowledgement of the rising Lib Dem challenge, since the main opposition party should obviously be "going after" the government.)
Nor did the party's makeover outlay remove the temptation of a bit of plagiarism.
Mr Duncan Smith borrowed from Hugh Gaitskell when he pledged to "fight, fight and fight again" to save the country he loved; from the Labour Party, with the new card defining key Tory principles; and from Mr Blair, with that promise to be "tough on tax, tough on the causes of tax".
Curiously too, Mr Duncan Smith appeared to lose Northern Ireland during his pledge to save the nation-state. Labour was "embarrassed by our island character", he declared before announcing a "nationwide" campaign for a referendum on the new EU constitution which would see conservatives petition "in every constituency in Britain".
Cutting taxes and slaying the Euro-federalist dragon might once have been a winning combination. Certainly the Daily Telegraph originally backed Mr Duncan Smith thinking the party leader indispensable to any referendum campaign against joining the single currency.
However, as the search goes on for 25 would-be assassins, the paper's new editor may be wondering whether this Tory leader would make much difference - even with the volume turned up.