In a lighter moment, David Cameron could be caricatured as a rather well-paid odd-job man. He's planning to fix the broken society, the broken politics, and now the broken economy. His speech earlier today at Bloomberg was all about spelling out that centre-right policies are the right tool for the job.
The reason Gordon Brown has botched the job of running the economy, both as chancellor for 10 years and now as prime minister, said Cameron, is that the centre-left doesn't really understand how the free market works. So New Labour went over the top and now here we are, with an economic slump on our hands. The global economic backdrop that brought countries' economies almost to their knees only got a cursory mention.
As Brown notches up some acclaim for devising a blueprint rescue package for banks that looks set to be emulated in other countries, Cameron's speech was designed to paint the prime minister as Bodge It Brown.
With this one big speech the Tory leader declared the party's short-lived truce with the government, when it was all hands to the pump, officially over and we are back to business as usual: Cameron branding Brown an economic cowboy.
