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  Another view....
  
  Cameron responds to Miliband, but still keeps his options open
  
  An opposition leader hasn't set the agenda in such a challenging way since Thatcher
  
  Full marks to David Cameron for making a speech without spurious policy announcements and choosing
  
  instead to advance an argument. There are already plenty of points in the year when a government has
  
  no choice but to announce policies. However if a leader takes the grown-up decision to avoid
  
  headline-grabbing initiatives that are quickly forgotten he must find ways of dramatising the argument,
  
  and framing a case of depth.
  
  Cameron failed to do this as he ended his party's conference. Instead his themes were familiar and
  
  developed superficially. No doubt next year he will arrive armed with illustrative policies for the next
  
  election. But he will need to deepen the argument too if he wants to be heard, let alone sway many voters.
  
  Much of yesterday's speech was a response to Ed Miliband's one last week. I cannot recall an opposition
  
  leader setting the agenda in such a challenging way since Margaret Thatcher in the late 1970s. Tony Blair
  
  appeared to do so as leader of the opposition, but his distinctive pitch was to lecture his party about the
  
  need to accept most existing orthodoxies, a relatively undemanding task when a party ached to win an
  
  election after four defeats.
  
  Miliband is braver. He has raised fresh questions about what should happen when markets fail and
  
  when a powerful militant newspaper becomes indiscriminately abusive. Wisely in his speech, Cameron
  
  did not engage with Miliband's important battle with the Daily Mail, but he devoted much of his speech to
  
  an attack on the Labour leadership.
  
  The attack was surprisingly clichéd. Cameron has a range of thoughtful advisers behind the scenes,
  
  all of them reflecting privately with nuanced subtlety on Miliband's speech. Some were genuinely
  
  impressed with it. Yet in the conference hall Cameron talked of Red Ed, mocked Ed Balls and repeated
  
  the familiar jibe about Labour wanting excellence for their own children but not for anyone else's, a silly allegation if
  
  anyone thinks about it for more than a second.
  
  Full story Independent.

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