Crowning a week when he defined the odds to become leader, Ed Miliband proclaimed himself to be part of the new generation and eloquently staked out Labour’s claim as the optimists. Meanwhile you’d think the Tories might have reason to be cheerful in their first conference in government in 14 years. Instead they offered a contrastingly cynical picture of negativism with more broken promises to be added to the pile: as well as VAT up to 20 per cent in January despite pre-election assurances to the contrary, we now have the news that child benefit (something we were repeatedly told was safe in Tory hands) is to be cut for anyone with a 40 per cent taxpayer in the household, ending the principle of universalism and penalising single parents and stay-at-home mums.

This does not feel like the last time we had a change of government. Whatever you think of what he became subsequently, when Blair declared ‘A new dawn has broken has it not?’ he captured the 1997 general sense of all-round optimism that prevailed. The old guard had been kicked out. Now it seems that with the Tories’ harsh pronouncements and warnings of how it’ll all get worse, Lord Snooty and his pals are back in charge with their warped sense of realism substituted for any kind of idealism. The contrast could be seen in Cameron’s speech on tourism delivered in August when he chose to take a swipe at Labour in power claiming: ‘They just didn’t get our heritage. They raided the national lottery taking money from heritage because it didn’t go with their image of ‘cool Britannia.’ At one point they even referred to Britain as a young country.’ With his insistence on the fusty old Britain of pomp and privilege Cameron doesn’t seem to have got the hang of this new generation thing.

Cameron is a man whose Desert Island Discs sounded like they were chosen in committee – a bit of Smiths, a Benny Hill track, some classical… His comments on culture seem to follow the theme saying everything and nothing eg. ‘It’s Glyndebourne and Glastonbury. The Bristol Old Vic and the Edinburgh Fringe. The Bodleian Library and the Hay literary festival. Ascot and the Millennium Stadium; Nelson’s column and the Olympic Park’s Orbit.’ Arts funders too have lamented the way that Tory cuts will affect the progress of the sector. Indeed the man responsible for swinging the axe on this front, the culture minister Jeremy Hunt, has not been immune from straying from his departmental brief in his prescription for Tory Britain. He managed to raised blood pressures as well as eyebrows with his almost eugenic decree that the working class should be limited in their child-rearing. This is a cabinet where 23 out of 29 members are millionaires. No wonder I’m left thinking ‘how the other half lives’.

Cameron’s August speech included the boast ‘I love going on holiday in Britain. I’ve holidayed in Snowdonia, south Devon and north Cornwall, the Lake District, Norfolk, the Inner Hebrides, the Highlands of Scotland, the canals of Staffordshire to name just a few.’ His daughter Florence was born in Cornwall: a great press coup. He seems to have perfected the art of the public holiday to demonstrate his in-touch credentials unlike back when in 2008 it was revealed that after taking an ostentatious trip to Cornwall to portray themselves as credit crunched average Britons enjoying a bucket and spade holiday for the cameras, the Camerons jetted off to the Turkish Riviera to spend time on a £21k a week luxury yacht complete with personal chef, captain and two ‘crew hands’, whatever they may be. No press were invited funnily enough.

As Labour’s seemingly interminable leadership contest (or ‘psychodrama’ as the press preferred) is now over and after the jolly japes of Liverpool/Manchester/Birmingham it seems that things will be back to some kind of normality, although the ‘new normal’ admittedly. As someone whose first Labour conference was at Blackpool who holds fond memories of gatherings at Bournemouth and Brighton, despite being a city girl at heart (or its suburban variant) I must say I do miss the seaside for these events. Maybe it is Neil Kinnock we have to blame for disrupting this with too many un-choreographed falls into the sand with Glenys. If the PM is serious about reviving Britain’s faded tourist economy perhaps he’d do well to directly impact things by having his party conference on the coast. It’s a challenge for all the party leaders.

In the meantime of the two choices between the positive vision of Labour versus the Tories’ backward turn, there have been record numbers joining Labour since Ed’s victory – some 700 overnight following the result, with numbers now in the thousands. These new recruits need to work with the existing membership to ensure that we never again let the Tories sneak into government by illegitimate means as they have done and to reverse the gains that they have made in the last two elections. Let’s make sure the road from Manchester culminates in victory at Westminster.

Rupa Huq blogs at www.rupahuq.co.uk

Photo: MND Photography