Prime Minister promises passion in Manchester

David Cameron will dedicate a significant chunk of his leader’s speech at Conservative conference this week to an emotional call for Scotland to stay in the UK.

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Post on the eve of his party conference, the Prime Minister let his passion for the issue show.

And he’s promised more in Manchester. He said: “You’ll hear a real passion for the UK. I want a very loud message to go from the party conference that we not just Scottish Conservatives but English Conservatives, Conservatives from Wales and Northern Ireland we want Scotland to stay.

“Of course we think Scotland is better off if it stays in the UK, I think the arguments stack up that way. But this is more an emotional issue, we want to keep the family of the United Kingdom together.

“I think sometimes people in Scotland can wonder ‘do they really want us?’ I want to send a resounding message ‘yes we do’. I think that’s important.”

Though he won’t say what the Tories might offer in terms of further devolution in the event of a no vote next September.

He added: “There’s a big question in front of the Scottish people do you want to stay or do you want to go? We’re focusing on that rather than anything that might happen after that.”

Cameron’s call for emotion in the independence debate echoes Ed Miliband’s words at Labour conference last week.

Inevitably the Prime Minister is dismissive of almost everything else that went on in Brighton including Labour’s headline grabbing policy to freeze energy prices till 2017 should they win in 2015.

Cameron said: “The energy proposal is unravelling. Just a few hours after the announcement he had to admit that in some circumstances it wouldn’t happen.”

It’s noticeable that the Prime Minister doesn’t parrot the energy sector attack lines on the policy that the lights would go out or big companies would go abroad.

Cameron appears to be pinning his hopes on fracking the controversial method of extracting shale gas that some claim can contaminate water supplies and trigger earthquakes to tackle the energy price crisis. In America household bills have plummeted as vast fields of underground shale gas have been tapped.

Perhaps wary of the negative publicity fracking has received Cameron prefers to call it unconventional gas.

He said: “There’s always more to do. We want to keep bills down for 20 years not 20 months and unconventional gas is important in that.”

Power bills have become a touchstone issue as Labour raises the spectre of a cost of living crisis. They will frame the next election around the question of whether people are better off now than they were when the Coalition came to power.

Said Cameron: “We have a very clear message that you are better off than you would’ve been if we’d continued with Labour’s disastrous approach to the debt and deficit. “Yes things are difficult because we’re dealing with a debt crisis. You cannot separate issues of costs of living and standards of living from the debt crisis. What Labour did meant that our country is poorer, and we’re still recovering from that. I hope to demonstrate that year after year as the economy grows as we create more jobs, keep people’s taxes down that this is a government that is on the side of hard working people.”

Hard work is a theme that will be repeated a lot this week.

Added Cameron: “If you play by the rules and work hard you should be rewarded rather than punished. We’ll be able to demonstrate to people that this country is on the right track. The economy is turning the corner, there’s absolutely no complacency but we want to finish the job. Finishing the job means securing the recovery for all.”

And Cameron wants the Tories to finish the job on their own.

He added: “At their conferences Labour and the Lib Dems were very much talking to themselves whereas we have the opportunity to talk to the country.

“We have the opportunity to start building the argument for a Conservative majority government if you want a stronger government with a clear majority, clearly accountable for what it promises and what it does.

“We’re dealing with problems like welfare and immigration, turning the tide on the deficit. We can do even more even better in a Conservative majority government.”