Man of the moment

The hall was packed: this was the speaker delegates at the Fed conference had come to see. Everyone in housing knows the next few years will be financially tough (lifestyles of certain rich and infamous housing association chiefs aside, presumably). People simply want to know how tough. And, assuming his party wins the next election, Conservative shadow housing minister Grant Shapps is the man in the know.

Perhaps it was the sense that for the first time a Fed audience was palpably hanging on his words; perhaps he simply put too much sugar on his Corn Flakes this morning. Either way, it was with a virtual hop, skip and a jump that a sprightly Shapps took to the stage in Hall 1 of the Birmingham’s ICC.

Already as he headed for the speaker’s dais, the 41-year old cut a contrasting figure to the staid, defensive performances government ministers are wont to give. But wait, here was something else new. He was discarding his notes, turning from the designated platform, shunning the autocue.

In a classic ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron maneuver, Shapps was choosing to wing it (although the vision of hours spent learning lines and a fevered brow was never too hard to conjure). Boy was he on message.

‘This country is dangerously close to the edge financially,’ he began, echoing any Tory you care to listen to, or who thinks you do. The nation’s debts off the charts, its AAA rating at risk – ‘it’s going to be bloody tough’ he warned, suddenly sounding very old Tory.

His ideas for making the best of a bad situation included the already trailed idea of matching councils’ tax take for every new home built on their patch. He chose a receptive audience to reveal the cherry on top – an extra 25 per cent for new affordable homes.

The promise of sweeping planning reforms, to be outlined ahead of the election, also received murmurs of support: the gist being to scrap the top down stuff and let local authorities get on with it.

‘The national government’s responsibility should be to look at the broader economy and look at what’s needed to be done to rebalance it,’ he concluded. ‘Then we’ll [leave it to] you to do what’s best. Which is to innovate and put plans into practice.’

Sweet talk done, he took the opportunity to get a couple of things off his chest. After laying into chief execs’ salaries (‘I hope you won’t mind me saying this…’), there came a ticking off for sweating the detail. ‘We spend far too much time thinking about individual smaller schemes and  not enough thinking about the really big picture.’

It’s hard not to wonder about the bigger picture for the MP for Welwyn Hatfield himself. No Shapps speech is complete without his set-piece dig at the number of housing ministers he’s faced ‘over the despatch box’; the 2-year housing brief veteran didn’t disappoint, clocking up at least three mentions in the first 20 minutes. But should the Tories triumph at the polls, it’s hard to imagine this former entrepreneur will be content to remain in situ for long.

Here is a young politician clearly champing at the bit, at pains not only to emulate his party leader but keen to seem chummy with Cameron. (Apparently the Conservatives only started thinking about housing benefit reform after Shapps told Cameron about a trip to the seaside where he’d met people caught in the benefits trap).

Nor, apparently does he cultivate his image along partisan lines. As Shapps bounds from the stage, I ask a fellow delegate what she made of him. ‘Isn’t he like Tony Blair?’ she cooed.