Did he really just say that?

At last year's Tory conference, David Cameron wooed the party faithful with a carefully-rehearsed "look-mum-no-notes" speech. It worked brilliantly for him.

But it contained one of the most emptily emetic lines of political rhetoric ever deployed by a politician hoping one day to occupy the highest office in the land:

"Let's dream a new generation of Conservative dreams."

Frankly, I didn't think anything could top that. But I just heard Mr Cameron's peroration in his first conference speech as Conservative party leader:

"Let optimism beat pessimism, let sunshine win the day."

That's how to put the retch into wretched.

If our next-but-one Prime Minister is really going to be a Tory, can it please be someone who doesn't think that leadership is about reading the country a bedtime story?