Old vinegar in new bottles

Tweet Cameron got a lot of coverage for his speech yesterday, and superficially it sounded as though it was full of new and different ideas. But even having worked through the full text, I still feel that there was a lack of hard detail. It read - as I suppose it was intended to - like one of Tony Blair's speeches; full of juicy sound bites, lacking in any real bite.

On the one hand, he talked a lot about devolving power – but managed to do so without once mentioning either Wales or Scotland. He did say that "We're going to get rid of pointless and unaccountable regional government and bureaucracy"; but my guess is that this was a speech intended primarily for English consumption, and that we shouldn't read too much into that.

Indeed, much of the speech dealt with matters which are devolved in Wales and Scotland, and it's still entirely unclear whether the Tories can or would try to foist these policies on Wales and Scotland at all. Again, he's not really aiming at a Welsh or Scottish audience is he? He knows he'll lose here whatever he says.

And although the content seemed to be new and fresh, some of it was just the madcap ideas of Thatcher and Joseph recycled and relabelled for a generation with a different zeitgeist. Old vinegar in new bottles.

"Choice" is a word which the Tories have used a lot in the past in relation to education; no real surprise to see it re-appearing. It sounds a bit motherhood and apple pie; it's hard to disagree with the idea of giving people choices, but neither is it clear how that would work, particularly in rural areas such as Wales. I'm for having all schools up to scratch in the first place – and that's a policy which, unlike the idea of 'choice', is as relevant to rural areas as urban ones.

Taking "… power over children's education out of the council's hands…" sounds an awful lot like the failed policy of school opt-outs. And giving any group that wants to the right to set up new schools sounds a lot like the Labour policy which has led to academies being founded by creationists amongst others.

Fixed term parliaments was one of the headlines; and I'd support that. But, for all the attention that one grabbed, he didn't actually promise to do anything more than think about it. I suspect that it's one of those things that appeals to him as an opposition leader but will quickly be dropped if he gets to No. 10.

PS I was pleased to see him having a go at "...bankers reaping their bonuses despite breaking the economy...". Pity he didn't extend his condemnation to political parties largely funded on the profits of wrecking the economy.