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David Cameron talks of big deficit and Big Society

Richard Moss | 16:07 UK time, Wednesday, 6 October 2010

David Cameron

Your Country Needs You: David Cameron gives his first Conservative conference speech as Prime Minister

That's your lot from the Conference season then.

David Cameron rounded off with talk of the big deficit but also the Big Society.

The policy that seemingly failed to enthuse during the election was put centre stage in .

That will please the Penrith and the Border MP Rory Stewart who's been doing the rounds of fringe meetings to sell the idea to delegates this week.

He even organised his own meeting to talk about how it's working in his Cumbrian constituency.

Both David Cameron and Rory Stewart insist the policy is nothing to do with cuts and everything to do with empowerment.

It won't be a retreat by the state, they say, but a change in role. The state will help people exercise power.

Your Country Needs You was the Conservative leader's rallying call. You can see the newspaper front pages now with David Cameron complete with a Kitchener moustache.

Lord Kitchener's war recruitment poster

A call to arms then, but the Conservatives will be hoping that their volunteers don't end up suffering the fate of many in Kitchener's army - stuck in the trenches with little hope of moving forward.

The speech was well-delivered, the PM was confident and assured, and at his best when he was skewering Labour.

But it was short on new policy, and there was no hint of compensation for those higher-rate taxpayers who will see their Child Benefit disappear in 2013.

In just over two weeks' time, we'll find out the details of the cuts this country's facing.

Judging by the reaction to the Child Benefit changes there are some tough times ahead.

Will the more optimistic vision of an empowered Big Society be enough to lift some of that gloom?

And will the help he talked about for the North - the £1bn Regional Growth Fund, the help with broadband, the Green Investment Bank - turn round a region that will lose significant numbers of public sector jobs in the next few months?

We don't know yet, as to coin (and warp) another wartime phrase, this is merely the end of the beginning, and not the beginning of the end.

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