At last, the PM puts a tiger in the tank

FROM the start of the election campaign, this paper has been pleading with the Conservatives to show some optimism, passion and a sense of direction. Yesterday, David Cameron supplied the missing ingredients in abundance.

In a hugely assured performance (say what you will about the Prime Minister, he has a consummate gift for rising to big occasions), he outlined a Tory vision of a Britain in which the good life is to be had by everyone willing to strive for it.

With much justification, he highlighted his party’s achievements since 2010, when this country stared into the abyss.

Indeed, who could have believed, amid the wreckage left by Labour, that Britain would now enjoy the West’s fastest growth outside the US – or that Mr Cameron would be able to boast of 1,000 new jobs created for every day he has held office?

But his speech at the launch of his manifesto was much more than an exercise in self- congratulation on past successes. This was the vision of a leader looking ahead, with infectious hope and a refreshingly Tory sense of purpose.

Not for him Ed Miliband’s all-powerful state, regulating every spit and cough of our lives and seizing money from those who earn it to give to those who don’t.

In Mr Cameron’s ‘buccaneering, worldbeating, can-do’ Britain, families will be able to decide for themselves how they spend their wages.

Hence his hugely cheering pledge to raise the thresholds for income tax, taking the lowest paid out of it altogether, while lifting the starting point for the 40p rate to £50,000.

To Labour, success and self-reliance may be dirty words. To Mr Cameron, they’re to be celebrated and encouraged.

Similarly over inheritance tax, the Prime Minister shares this paper’s belief that only the wealthiest should be hit. After taxing us to the hilt while we’re alive, what right has the state to help itself to our hard-earned property, intended for our families, when we’re dead?

But perhaps most welcome is the pledge to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants – except in Scotland, where the ideological vindictiveness of the SNP is designed to thwart ambition. Thus, Mr Cameron keeps burning the flame lit by Margaret Thatcher – a prime minister who truly understood the meaning of aspiration (and how typical of the monstrous hypocrisy of the Left that so many state-subsidised housing association landlords, with six-figure salaries and handsome homes of their own, wish to deny their tenants the same security and independence).

Indeed, there is something in this Tory manifesto for everyone – whether the young seeking apprenticeships, parents wrestling with childcare costs, businesses frustrated by red tape, pensioners on tight budgets or families seeking easier access to their GPs.

One, mighty caveat: as with every party in this less-than-honest campaign, the Tories leave many questions unanswered about where the money is to come from to meet their promises (and how dispiriting that they, too, seem to regard pension pots as a cashpoint for the government).

But with their record, there is surely no doubt that they are far more determined – and competent – than their rivals to bring our terrifying debts under control.

Meanwhile, never forget that, defying the two Eds’ apocalyptic predictions of mass unemployment, the private sector has created four jobs for every one shed by the state. This surely bodes well for the substantial cuts still needed.

Indeed, with all the economic indicators pointing the right way, there is every reason to believe Mr Cameron when he says: ‘We’re on the brink of something special for our country.’

Always assuming, of course, that voters won’t be mad enough to turn back to the Labour abyss.