Cameron and Davis engage in battle
Tory leadership hopefuls David Cameron and David Davis battled over tax and spin last night in a bid to woo over undecided Conservative voters.
Other issues up for discussion included education policy, drugs and Europe.
Both appeared on the special edition of Question Time ahead of ballot papers being sent today to 300,000 grassroots Tory members, who will then have five weeks to decide which man they wish to lead the Conservative party.
The debate, which started off with both saying the other would make a great leader, began mildly; but it was not long before the two rivals began to clash, with Mr Davis staking out his breadth of experience and Mr Cameron arguing that his relative youth could be the catalyst for a resurgent Tory party more in touch with younger voters.
Mr Davis accused Mr Cameron of being heir-apparent to Tony Blair, and warned that Britain was “sick and tired of spin”.
He said: “The British public has seen three Blair parliaments. They are sick of spin. The era of spin is coming to an end. This is absolutely the worse time for the Conservative party to imitate Tony Blair.”
“People want to know specifically what we stand for. You talk wonderfully about idealism and principle, people want to know what it means. We cannot get by with high-flown words.”
But Mr Cameron countered the criticism, accusing Mr Davis of setting policy now in order to grab the headlines, and defending himself against one audience member’s suggestion that he talked a lot of “waffle”.
“Don’t make the mistake of trying to set out policies in this leadership campaign that will make us look ridiculous in five years time,” he declared.
Europe was another issue about which the two candidates showed their differences.
Mr Davis indicated the possibility of a referendum which would be used to insist upon an unrestrained return of power from the EU to Britain.
He explained: “We should have an open Europe so that not just Britain but any country should be able to take back powers and the only powers that will be limited from that, prevented from being recovered, will be a narrow group of powers relating to the single market.
“After all, back in 1975 we signed up to join the common market, not to join a united states of Europe.”
Mr Cameron said Britain should take back some powers on social and employment policy, warning they were causing “so much damage to British business”.
But the younger candidate spoke less positively about Mr Davis’s referendum idea, dubbing it a cynical attempt to trigger a wave of approving media coverage.
Urging the Tory party to “spend sometime thinking through its policies”, Mr Cameron argued: “I don’t want to see us announcing policies day after day to meet a newspaper headline.”
But Mr Davis moved to reject such claims, insisting his ideas had not been forged on the “back of an envelope” but rather through careful thought and deliberation.
On the thorny issue of drugs – Mr Cameron has already refused to answer questions about whether he took drugs at university – Mr Davis argued that existing drug laws should not be relaxed, saying he had seen them “destroy too many lives”.
Mr Cameron, however, called for a more pragmatic approach, suggesting ecstasy should be downgraded.
In all, Mr Davis emphasised his experience, saying he had a track record of “taking on the big hitters” of the Labour party. Mr Cameron, meanwhile, insisted that what really mattered was setting the right direction for the party.
A decision on the next Conservative leader is expected on December 5th.
