David Cameron’s Conservative party conference speech was not the one he would have made two weeks ago. The political climate has changed. Instead of the sunshine of the Tories’ consistent opinion poll leads and the rosy prospect of winning the next general election, the opposition leader had to respond to the darkening gloom of the global financial crisis and the thunder of Gordon Brown’s jibe last week that the meltdown was “no time for a novice” to be running the country.

Mr Cameron dealt well and directly with the charge of being inexperienced and offered an alternative view of what constitutes leadership. But this has been a hard week for an opposition politician to look anything but irrelevant.