The Mayor of Casterbridge

I'm speechless regarding what seems to be the final victory of form over substance.

Fortunately, I’m alone in this.

Here are a couple of my favourite optimists, i.e., actual conservatives who don't feel quite ready to reach for the razor blades and bubble bath.

Goodnight Vienna says: "A few years ago I'd have been jumping up and down, applauding a speech like this but we've been tricked and cheated so much that it's hard to trust - in fact I don't think I'll ever trust a politician again: question, question, question. Until I see the small print and the action to match the words I'm going to keep my hat handy."

David Duff is still more upbeat, thinking that there might be an outside chance, with some parts even worth an A: "I had my caveats on certain points, and I wouldn't trust that bunch of scrounging crooks who sat behind him further than I could piss into a gale, but the overall ideology, if you like, the philosophy, that drove the speech was entirely sensible, honourable and proper. Within a few months words will give way to deeds and then shall we see "power being power what our seemers be."

It goes downhill a bit after that.

Sue, being Sue, is brief and forthright, and if England had bullfighters...

Well, I pity the Nu Labour/Blu Labour 'Brit' who finds his way into her sights any time soon. "It doesn't make any difference whether Cameron gave a rousing speech. After all,..."

EU referendum consigns all my fellow-Tories’ promises to a bin somewhere in Brussels, but, hey, this is a victory speech by Britain’s’ brightest and bluest– it’s supposed to be a happy event; not marred by facts or any form of truth. On some Tory luminary talking the talk: “Has this dumb cluck heard of IGCs and treaties? Because nothing can be repatriated without the treaties being rewritten and that cannot be done without a unanimous agreement at an IGC.”

Peter Hitchens puts it all in an historical context: and it’s the culture war that really decides it, in his eyes.

You can say what you like about public debt, or rearmament, or Europe, but in the end the C&UP is never going to deliver conservatism because it’s accepted the Liberal Left’s culture.

“The Tory Party went into administration, where it remains, controlled by the trustees of the establishment and the thought police of the media — who ensured David Cameron's succession.”

Powerless but office-seeking, apostate and apologetic, authority-spurning and long since bought off the auction block by the political class, I wish my old friends and comrades in the Party good luck and happiness of their time in the “Government.”

Maybe their rulers will let them keep something shiny when it’s been decided that they need to be replaced.