Cameron's glass may be half-full - but the policy cupboard remains half-empty

It is generally true to say that in order to be successful in politics, you have to be capable of conveying a sense of optimism about your country and its future.

One of Tony Blair's key strengths at the start of his leadership was his ability to communicate a vision of a bright 'New Britain' in contrast to the greyness of the John Major years.

Later, David Cameron donned the same mantle, exhorting the voters to "let sunshine win the day" as he pitched himself against a tired old Labour government.

But there can come a time when optimism crosses the line into mere boosterism, and in my view it’s a line Mr Cameron crossed in his party conference speech in Manchester this week.

"Let's reject the pessimism. Let's bring on the can-do optimism. Let's summon the energy and the appetite to fight for a better future for our country, Great Britain," he told the Tory faithful.

And again: "So let's see an optimistic future. Let's show the world some fight. Let's pull together, work together, and together lead Britain to better days."

If, by his own admission, Ed Miliband is no Tony Blair when it comes to speechmaking, then David Cameron is no Winston Churchill either.

And I sense that I was not the only one who was left somewhat unconvinced by the Prime Minister's attempts this week to summon up the bulldog spirit.

To take another of Mr Cameron's optimistic soundbites: "Right now we need to be energised, not paralysed by gloom and fear."

Yet in the eyes of many, it is his government which has produced the economic paralysis by cutting too far, too fast and choking off the fragile recovery that had begun to see us through the downturn.

In this context, the announcement of a mere 0.1pc growth in the economy during the last quarter could not have come at a worse time for Mr Cameron.

Against that gloomy backdrop, his attempts at uplift were no more persuasive than his earlier, now seemingly discarded mantra that "we're all in it together."

The most startling omission in Wednesday’s speech was the absence of any policy detail from the Prime Minister on how he plans to ensure that economic growth in the next quarter does not grind to a halt altogether.

“Here’s our growth plan,” he said. “Doing everything we can to help businesses start, grow, thrive, succeed. Where that means backing off, cutting regulation – back off, cut regulation. Where that means intervention, investment – intervene, invest. Whatever it takes to help our businesses take on the world – we’ll do it.”

Commenting on this passage on his blog, Alastair Campbell wrote: “What was happening in the Team Cameron speech meetings? Did nobody stop and say ‘er, Prime Minister, this is a bit embarrassing, and doesn’t really say anything?’”

Okay, so Campbell is hardly an objective observer - but he knows what it takes to produce a good conference speech, and he also knows a turkey when he sees one.

The background story bubbling away behind the scenes at this conference was the nascent leadership battle to succeed Mr Cameron.

Home Secretary Theresa May made her pitch for the affections of the Tory Right by inflating a somewhat tendentious story about an over-stayed student who defied deportation on the grounds of owning a cat into front page news.

Then, as always, there was Boris Johnson, the London Mayor lobbing his own hand-grenade into the Tories' never-ending debate about Europe by announcing he favours a referendum on EU membership.

And even Mr Cameron himself felt the need to acknowledge Chancellor George Osborne's leadership ambitions, jesting about his choice of The Man Who Would Be King as an audio book.

But joking aside, the Prime Minister should surely be deeply worried by this outbreak of posturing and positioning among the potential contenders for his crown.

The result of the last general election showed that the public are not entirely convinced by him, and I sense that his party are increasingly unconvinced by him too.

Do the Tories believe that Mr Sunshine’s unflagging sense of optimism will be enough to save them from the gathering economic and political storm clouds ahead?

Or are they already secretly planning for Life after Dave?

No more sunshine kid

David Cameron rightly came in for a fair amount of ridicule last year for using the phrase "let sunshine win the day!" in his opening conference speech.

But as Iain Dale reports today, what the activists want to hear from him this year is "a bit of Donner und Blitzen. No sunshine thank you very much."

This apparently light-hearted comment exemplifies the change in strategy that has occurred in the past few months as the Tories realised they had seriously underestimated Gordon Brown.

Cameron thought he could win the next election simply by demonstrating he was the "sunnier" character of the two. He has since discovered that the British electorate - or at least those bits of it that talk to opinion pollsters - really aren't that shallow.

The Happiness Agenda: Now Milburn jumps on the bandwagon

I took David Cameron's money can't buy happiness speech as the main subject for my latest column and Podcast, after Cameron appeared to take up my earlier suggestion that the party which most closely manages to identify itself with this agenda will win the next election.

"Bit by bit, Mr Cameron is cleverly positioning himself as the man who – in contrast to the dour Scotsman - can put a smile on Britain’s face."

But wait. It now emerges that someone else whose name has frequently been mentioned in connection with Number 10 Downing Street is making a big pitch for exactly the same territory.

Step forward Alan Milburn, who like Cameron, is no friend of the Chancellor and may conceivably be entertaining thoughts of running against him in a contested election sometime soon.

The really interesting thing about Milburn's piece in this week's Sunday Times News Review is that although it starts off as a paean to family life and spending more time with the kids, the more your read on the more it starts to come across like a personal manifesto for the future.

Take this for example:

"I suppose most of us have always known in our hearts that neither power nor money can buy happiness.....But while money alone won’t make us happy, tackling poverty alleviates misery. The happiest societies tend to be the most equal ones. And since unemployment — alongside family breakdown and bad health — makes the biggest contribution to unhappiness, creating paid employment is good news for the individual as well as for the economy."

Furthermore, although he several times insists he made the right decision in resigning twice from the Cabinet, not once in the piece does he rule out another return to the frontline.

Regular visitors know my views about Milburn's chances - I think they are very slight in view of his relative lack of standing with Labour MPs and the unions compared to Mr Brown and other potential rivals such as Alan Johnson.

But I wonder whether Milburn might just be craftily positioning himself as the man who can beat Mr touchy-feely Cameron at his own game?

Does David Cameron read my column?

Last Thursday, in my new(ish) column in the North West Enquirer, I made the following observation about the changing terms of the political debate.

"Other concerns are slowly coming to the fore.....most fundamentally of all, perhaps, the rise of the so-called “happiness” agenda – the idea that the first duty of governments should be to promote the emotional well-being of their citizens, even if this is at the expense of economic growth."

Yesterday Tory leader David Cameron, who may very well read the Enquirer since he has already featured in a front-page story and interview, said the following in a keynote speech.

"It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being. Improving our society's sense of well-being is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times."

Seriously, I think Cameron's attempt to claim the "happiness agenda" is a potentially incredibly significant development in terms of the political battles of the next few years.

His reference yesterday to there being more to life than the "Protestant Work Ethic" is a direct dig at his likely election opponent Gordon Brown who the Tories see as obsessed with work and regulation whereas they want to be identified with wellbeing and relaxation.

In my Enquirer column, I also made the prediction that, as we enter the twilight of the Blair era, the party which best manages to tap into this changing public agenda will be the one that ultimately emerges as the dominant force of the next decade or so.

Well so far, it's 1-0 to Mr Cameron.