UK:CONSERVATIVE PARTY leader David Cameron played the patriotic card against British prime minister Gordon Brown yesterday by asserting his place in a national leadership contest, setting aside party politics, to lead Britain through the global economic crisis, writes Frank Millarin Birmingham.
Delegates and commentators thought it a smart move by Mr Cameron on the third day of a Conservative Party conference seeming increasingly irrelevant as panic gripped the world's markets following the rejection of the US government's proposed $700 billion bailout of the banking system.
For the second time in three days the Conservatives responded to the turmoil by re-ordering their business.
As shadow chancellor George Osborne travelled to London for talks with chancellor Alistair Darling, Mr Cameron made an emergency statement to conference with an urgent message for his political opponents and the country at large.
"Let's not allow the political wrangling and point-scoring that we've seen in America to happen here in our own country," he said. "In Britain, we are all in this together. In Britain, let's stick together, and together we'll find a way through."
The immediate effect of Mr Cameron's proposed bipartisan approach was the guarantee of Tory support for new legislation which he said could be brought before the Commons next Monday to enable the Bank of England to rescue failing banks.
Until now, the Tories had been in dispute with the government over who should pull the trigger and start the rescue process - with the government saying it should be the Financial Services Agency and the Conservatives saying it should be the Bank of England.
"In the end what matters is getting the legislation through quickly," said Mr Cameron, confirming that he would drop his objection and return to the issue at a later point.
Mr Cameron also called on the Labour government to produce additional legislation next week to protect people's savings and deposits, ensure quick payouts and allow everyone "the comfort and security of knowing that whatever happens, their money is safe".
The third thing necessary, argued Mr Cameron, was "to break the self-fulfilling cycle" that was reducing banks' ability to lend.
"The problem is this," he said, "when the value of financial assets falls, a new international accounting regulation called 'marketing to market' automatically downgrades the value of banks. They are less able to raise the money to carry on their business.
"That in turn causes further falls in the value of financial assets. And this is making the crisis worse than in previous downturns. So our regulatory authorities, together with the European regulators, need to address this difficult issue".
In his scheduled speech to conference this afternoon Mr Cameron will promise to try and answer the questions people have about "what's going on . . . what is going to happen next" and "how we're going to get out of this mess".
Anger with bankers was easy to understand, he said yesterday - "they paid themselves vast rewards when it was all going well and the minute it all went wrong, they came to us to bail them out".
There would be "a day of reckoning", Mr Cameron acknowledged, as there would be argument over the weeks and months ahead as the Conservative Party resisted those who would use the crisis to try to "bury" rather than "reform" the free enterprise system.
But yesterday, he said, was one for safety, security and protection: "We should always be ready . . . to put aside party differences, to . . . help bring reassurance. Working across party lines is not just something we say because it might sound reasonable - it is something that may well be very necessary. There may well be need to be a marshalling of public support behind some big decisions. And we cannot allow what happened in America to happen here."