RSGOLD-RUNESCAPEGOLD

All parents would choose to be selected, but only a few can be. But then things are often contradictory.This was the PM on parental choice in education: "More selection? They'll have it. Why should governments say no, if parents think it's right for their children?" But selection is not about parental choice. Not for us passion, not for us destiny, not for us dangerous dreams of altered states. Welcome in the age of Joanna Trollope and Colin Cowdrey, Agas and untampered balls."Now we will conserve.

Conserve the union, conserve our institutions (we've destroyed the ones we didn't like), conserve the health service, but more than anything else - in order to conserve everything else - we must conserve us."Is this realistic? It does seem to entail spending a lot more public money, while cutting taxes at the same time - a return to the good old Byfordian days of stop-go. It is time to stop tinkering with things, time to settle down, to play golf, set up a sports academy and carry on carrying on. "Because it has been chaired by Dame Hazel Byford." And he was absolutely right. I do not really know who Dame Hazel is, but I have a mental image of her, and if it's accurate then this week was, in a very real sense, the triumph of the Dame Hazel Byfords; the victory of conservatism over right radicalism, of getting by over crusading, of twinsets over armour. Indeed, Dame Hazel and her pals met the disciples of Newt Gingrich and overcame.During the Prime Minister's Hazelly speech - holding a copy in my hand - I walked along the empty corridors of the conference centre, and his flat, declamatory tones would waft up to me from occasional ventilation shafts, or from around corners.And this is what he said, more or less "Once we were radicals But those times have gone. It had, said the party official to the masses, been a very successful conference. "And why," he asked, "has it been so successful?" Unity? John Major? A Labour-smashing performance? No.

But if Mr Clarke fails to deliver some cuts in taxes in his Budget in a few weeks' time, the gloss over the new show of unity in the Tory Party will peel before Christmas.. A Miller thriller, called The Coat of Varnish, will be playing at the end of the pier in Bournemouth next week.Bournemouth and Mr Major's speech have given the Tories a fighting chance. Michael Portillo - one of the Cabinet Euro-sceptics who led the calls for unity this week - said: "His sincerity oozed out of his speech."The Major speech-writers have no need for the playwright Sir Ronald Miller, who supplied the best lines for Lady Thatcher. The Prime Minister's gesture of support for his Chancellor - holding hands - was another. The message to the Euro-sceptics was clear: I am backing Mr Clarke and there will be no change of policy on Europe this side of a general election.Former minister Robert Hughes, one of Mr Major's campaign allies, said yesterday: "The turning-point was the Chancellor's speech, because he put to the conference two messages that they did not want to hear - continuing the policy on Europe, and damping down expectations on tax cuts."Mr Major sought to contrast his own dogged style with Tony Blair's brand of slickness.