by Mel Stride, Conservative MP

for Central Devon

Brighton and Manchester

THE conferences are over. The PM positive but cautious. Whilst the economic signs are good (deficit reduced by a third, growth returned) we are far from getting our economy back into balance. We must keep taxes low, back aspiration, reward hard work.

In Brighton, Labour rightly pointed out that the recovery must be for the many not the few and yet sought to address this with one of the most extraordinary political gimmicks in a generation – the imposition of frozen energy bills – a 'promise' that Labour accepted they might not keep just days after they had made it.  

This cunning ruse showed just how far Ed is out of touch with economic reality – what does he think utility companies will do when threatened with a future price freeze (put up bills in the present perhaps?) and what does he think they will do after a freeze other than hike prices to make up for income lost? And what of the effect on jobs? Not just in that sector but in others where investors will worry that Labour might also step in and micro-manage the economy?

Along with land grabbing, massive property taxes et al, Labour's conference signaled a lurch to the left. Back to the state intervention of the 1970s when we ended up as the 'sick man of Europe'. Party conferences typically mean little but this time was different.

Nigel Farage, whose own conference was eclipsed by daft remarks about women and the unedifying sight of one of his MEPs clubbing a journalist with a conference programme, used to delight in claiming that you could not get a cigarette paper between the two major parties. Well you can now. Labour is back in the red. And the stakes at the next election just got far greater.