David Cameron did not need to offer a tax cut to 30m people to send the Conservative party home from its Birmingham conference in good spirits: an air of almost surreal optimism in the city's canal quarter has been in evidence from the start.
In spite of Tory MPs splintering off to Ukip and polls suggesting the Tories are heading for defeat next May, Mr Cameron's speech gave a glimpse of why the party still thinks it can win.
While George Osborne's speech on Monday set out some of the economic pain needed to balance the nation's books by 2018, Mr Cameron's speech sought to explain why the pain would be worth it.
The prime minister's pitch to the voters was wide-ranging: an attempt to shore up the Tory vote, win back Ukip switchers, reach out to swing Labour voters while stealing the Liberal Democrats' most popular policy: tax cuts for the low paid.
But Tory confidence is founded not just on the message but on the messenger; in contrast to Ed Miliband's rambling and forgetful Labour speech last week, Mr Cameron's closing address was polished and relentless in its political intent.
To the delight of Tory activists, Mr Cameron promised voters that most traditional of Conservative offers: a tax cut, paid for by a programme of spending cuts that will continue even after the public finances return to surplus. Labour said the policy was unfunded.
But the promise of lower taxes works on two levels. The promised increase in the personal allowance to £12,500 will lift a further 1m people out of the income tax net altogether and is a potent offer to lower income households.
Even though much of the tax cut will be clawed back by Mr Osborne through his planned two-year freeze on working age welfare - including tax credits - the policy will look good on leaflets in key Labour/Tory marginals.
If raising the personal allowance is straight larceny from the Lib Dems, Mr Cameron gave the tax policy a Tory twist by promising to raise the threshold for the 40p rate of tax to £50,000.
Middle and higher earners - in other words the Tory core vote - stand to benefit by at least twice as much as low earners from the change. "The 40p rate was only supposed to be paid by the most well-off people in our country," Mr Cameron said. "But in the last couple of decades far too many have been dragged into it: teachers, police officers."
Mr Cameron then turned his attention to Tory voters who have switched to Ukip with a short but targeted passage on Europe and a promise to curb benefit claims by migrant workers. "I know you want this sorted so I will go to Brussels, I will not take no for an answer," he said.
The European Court of Human Rights - whose very mention drew a low growl of dissent from Tory activists - would be "sorted out", although it remains unclear whether Mr Cameron's proposed British bill of rights would exclude the UK from the jurisdiction of judges in Strasbourg.
But Mr Cameron believes his most potent weapon against Ukip is not policy - he knows he cannot win an auction on immigration and the EU with Nigel Farage - but on the argument that a vote for Ukip would let Labour in.
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FOLLOW USΑκολουθήστε τη σελίδα του Euro2day.gr στο Linkedin"On May 7 you could go to bed with Nigel Farage and wake up with Ed Miliband," Mr Cameron said. "If you vote Ukip, that's really a vote for Labour."
The Tories believe that the perceived weakness of Mr Miliband and the fact that many voters do not trust him on the economy remain the key to winning the next election. "Did you hear Ed Miliband last week?" Mr Cameron said. "He spoke for an hour but didn't mention the deficit once."
Mr Miliband's counterthrust to Tory hegemony on the economy last week was to try to refocus the debate on the NHS, a political challenge which Mr Cameron took on in an emotionally charged section of his speech.
To the evident distress of his wife Samantha, Mr Cameron recounted the treatment given to their dying son Ivan, remembering how he arrived at the hospital knowing, "You have people who will care for that child and love that child like their own".
"How dare they suggest I would ever put that at risk for other people's children?" he said. "How dare they frighten those who are relying on the NHS right now?" The prime minister promised to increase health spending in the next parliament.
Mr Cameron knows that this may be his last big conference speech - the opinion polls suggest he is presiding over a voteless recovery - and his Tory enemies are circling. "I don't claim to be a perfect leader," he said, a plea to his critics to give him a break.
But strong on both political offence and defence, Mr Cameron gave voice to his party's unnerving display of optimism this week. Asked to describe the difference between the mood at the Labour and Tory conferences, one diplomat in Birmingham said: "They smile here."
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Main policy announcements at this year's Conservative Party Conference
Pensions
An early conference pledge was the scrapping of the 55 per cent tax on what is left in a pension pot when someone dies. The tax changes do not apply to final salary or defined benefit pensions or annuities. In future, when someone over 75 dies, beneficiaries will only have to pay their marginal income tax rate. When an individual under the age of 75 dies, their pension pot can go tax free to any beneficiary they nominate. The changes will apply to all payments made after April 6 2015. They are expected to cost the exchequer £150m a year.
Zero-hours contracts
David Cameron on Wednesday pledged to scrap companies' use of "exclusive zero hour contracts" to prevent casual workers taking on jobs elsewhere. This is not new announcement: Vince Cable announced a ban on exclusivity clauses in these contracts in June and his business department is now running a short consultation with trade unions and business groups on how to implement the change.
Corporation tax
George Osborne has made cutting corporation tax a priority as chancellor. Inheriting a headline rate of 28 per cent in 2010, the chancellor has lowered it in each budget as chancellor, with a new 20 per cent rate due to come into force next April. David Cameron said this would continue under a future Conservative government and pledged to "always have the most competitive corporate tax rates in the G20, lower that Germany, lower than Japan, lower that the US."
Welfare
There was a flurry of measures on welfare spending. Mr Osborne announced a two year freeze on working age benefits -- affecting 10m people -- such as Jobseekers allowance and universal credit in order to whittle £3.2bn a year off Britain's welfare bill. Five million people will also be hit by the benefit changes, though Tories argue these are the "hard choices" they need to make to cut the deficit.
About 150,000 young people will be hit by a pledge to exempt childless 18 to 21-year-olds from housing benefit and remove their entitlement to jobseeker's allowance after six months of failing to find a job.
The benefit cap would be lowered from £26,000 to £23,000 a year to save around £135m a year. That policy is electorally popular but at present applies to only 40,000 families. The £300m savings garnered from the removal of benefits from young people and the lowering the benefit cap will be reinvested into a programme to create 3m apprenticeships.
Housing
First-time buyers under the age of 40 will be offered a discount of 20 per cent on "up to" 100,000 new homes if the Tories win the election. The announcement on "starter homes" was designed to head off political attacks by Ed Miliband, who has promised that Labour would build 200,000 homes a year by 2020.The policy would not cost the government any extra money because these would not be council houses. However, the inducement to private developers to build starter homes is an exemption from the section 106 requirement obliging them to ensure that they provide some social housing alongside each development. As such there could be fewer truly affordable homes built under the scheme than without it.
GPs
Everyone in Britain would have access to a GP seven days a week by 2020 if the Tories win the next election, the prime minister announced. If elected, the Conservatives will give GP surgeries an extra £400m over five years so they can pay the extra cost of having doctors on duty throughout the week. But this does not necessarily mean patients will be able to see their GP at any time. Surgeries that have participated in pilot schemes have at times given patients access to doctors via telephone or email. The £400m is not new money - it will be taken from existing budgets. Surgeries will be allowed to bid for a share of the funding with their ideas about how to ensure seven-day access, which could involve several surgeries clubbing together to offer services.
Communications data and extremism banning orders
The controversial "snooper's charter" - allowing police and security services access to individuals' skype, email and internet chat data - would be pushed through under a future Conservative government. The original plans were blocked by the Liberal Democrats, but Theresa May, Home Secretary, argues the powers are vital for catching terrorists and paedophiles who use web communications. Separately, Ms May has promised that the Tory manifesto will contain plans for "extremism disruption orders" to prevent extremist preachers or far-right campaigners from broadcasting their views on TV or social media. So-called "banning orders" could also be deployed to make membership of extremist groups or fundraising for extremists a criminal offence.
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