by David Cameron will use his first conference speech as prime minister to tell delegates that he faces tough times ahead as he struggles to convince the electorate that making swingeing cuts to public services is not really, really easy for him.
The coming months are expected to call upon all of the prime minister’s reserves of fake concern, as he trues to appear confliced over the number of cuts his administration will be making.
As one senior political correspondent put it, “Pretending to be upset about something you wanted to happen all along is a staple skill for any prime minister. In many ways, this is his first real test.”
There has also been concern among the electorate about the decision not to mention child benefit cuts in the Conservative election manifesto.
A government spokesperson explained, “We’re sorry we didn’t include child benefit cuts in the manifesto, but if we included all of the unpopular things we were going to do in our election document outlining what we were going to do – then you would never have voted for us.”
“It’s actually pretty straight forward when you think about it.”
David Cameron speech
Government officials have expressed confidence in the prime minister’s ability to show the necessary levels of remorse in making decisions he is secretly quite happy about.
“He has an excellent poker face, during the last cabinet game he took George Osborne for thousands – not that this means much, the man’s a simpleton.”
“But when it comes to convincing the public that he cares about something for which he could not give a single toss, there really is no-one better.”
Former Lib Dem supporter Graham Knowles said, “If you could boil down the Conservative party raison d’etre to just three words, they would probably be ‘fewer public services’ – so why this is a surprise to anyone, I have absolutely no idea.”
