Cameron loses it?

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The wonderful ePolitix reports in the future on the speech that Cameron is about to give later today, perhaps the most important of his leadership according to the Telegraph. Cameron will say that he will not "copy New Labour", i.e. he is not the natural successor to Blair. But he will say that the world has moved on to a "new politics" of "people know best". And then he will say, "We get the modern world..". This is pure Blairspeak. I've posted before about the Blair boast of how he "gets it" when old-fashioned others don't (eg the millions who marched against the Iraq war fearing a disaster and were proved right). The idea that the modern world in all its complexity is something you can "get" by instinct points to a disastrous failure of mind not to speak of leadership. Its origin is, of course, advertising. Apparently boasting of his art collection Lord Saatchi once explained his version of connoisseurship saying that when he looked at a work its impact had to be instantaneous, and he snapped his fingers. If he "got" it, he bought it. Adverts need to work like this, as they fight to break through people's time barrier. But great art? Maybe it needs looking at twice, maybe it needs to make you pause, or fill you with the possibility of seeing something important differently, because more truely. Maybe you have to give this time. So to the modern world. If Cameron thinks he can win by boasting like Blair, methinks he will have to make another most-important-speech-of-his-leadership fairly soon.