BRITAIN: David Cameron launched the Conservatives on the "long, hard" road back to power yesterday with a commitment to the National Health Service at the heart of his vision to "roll forward the frontiers of society".
In an uncompromisingly "modernising" speech on the final day of the Tory party conference Mr Cameron told his audience the NHS was for him an expression of national values, "a symbol of collective will" and of "social solidarity".
Insisting that tackling climate change was their "social responsibility" to the next generation, Mr Cameron warned his party that "going green is not some fashionable, pain-free option" - while challenging prime minister Tony Blair to include a climate change bill in the next queen's speech.
He unashamedly raided Blairite terrain, accusing Mr Blair of giving-up "on one of the best things he ever said", and asserting it was now only the Conservatives who would be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime".
He promised greater financial support for the armed forces while serving abroad.
"We're proud of everything you do fighting in our name," he told them - while pleading "guilty" to an intention to pursue "a British foreign policy" which would be "steadfast" but not "slavish" in its conduct of "the special relationship" with the US.
Vowing that he would "never play politics" with national security, he continued the risky strategy of positioning himself to the left of Labour on some key policy issues - opposing detention without trial and ID cards - while demanding tight border controls and the admission of wire-tap evidence in the courts.
Despite warnings that it will be impossible to achieve, Mr Cameron replayed his populist commitment to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a new British bill of rights ensuring "a legal framework for those rights that does not hamper the fight against terrorism".
He also offered reassurance to traditionalists worried by the pace and scale of change in the party, reaffirming his support for marriage and the family - before making clear that this was about "commitment" rather than religion or morality, that that applied equally to gay men and women in civil partnerships, and that "family" included single parents.
In the past, said Mr Cameron, the Conservatives had talked about "rolling back the state". But this was not an end in itself: "Our fundamental aim is to roll forward the frontiers of society." And there was one vital way in which they could do that.
Describing his own childhood as loving and close, Mr Cameron said: "Families, to me, are not just the basic unit of society, they're the best. They are the ultimate source of our society's strength or weakness. Families matter because almost every social problem that we face comes down to family stability. And so I will set a simple test for each and every one of our policies: does it help families?"
Defining childcare as a first priority, particularly for single parents trapped in poverty, Mr Cameron also said the state should stop telling people how to use their childcare allowance, arguing that it could be directed to grandparents, friends or neighbours who sometimes provided this "vital lifeline".
The Tory leader said he was not naive in thinking somehow that the state could engineer happy families with particular policies or tax breaks.
"All I can tell you is what I think. And what I think is that there's something special about marriage.
"It's not about religion, it's not about morality. It's about commitment. When you stand up there, in front of your friends and your family, in front of the world . . . what you're doing really means something.
"You are publicly saying 'it's not just about me anymore. It is about we - together, the two of us, through thick and thin.
"That really matters. I think it matters and means something whether you're a man and a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man. That's why I am proud that we supported civil partnerships."
His modernising agenda extended beyond the environment to housing, again with a warning that there was "no pain-free solution" to the dilemma that would satisfy every vested interest. The Tories, he said, had to be "on the side of the next generation" and that meant "building more houses and flats particularly for young people".
Urging people to see Al Gore's "brilliant" film An Uncomfortable Truth, he said his uncomfortable truth for the British public was that binding targets for carbon reduction year on year would create "a price for carbon" in the economy meaning that "things which produce more carbon will get more expensive".
On the controversial topic of the week, he said everybody in the hall, including him, knew that "a low tax economy is a strong economy". But he again refused "to flash up some pie in the sky tax cuts" and repeated his suspicion that critics talking about "substance" really wanted a return to the old policies.
"Well they're not coming back," he declared: "We're not going back." Real substance, he said, was "about character, judgment and consistency . . . About getting it right for the long-term".