At last, Cameron gets the Right message across So there it is: the real, underlying cause of the present economic emergency is the unaffordability of comprehensive welfare systems that encompass every section of society. The crash of 2008 was just a symptom of the basic delusion: the banks had been allowed - indeed, encouraged - to take ludicrous risks with credit, because the governing classes wanted a "boom" that they could milk to provide revenue for their entitlement programmes. The Western world is currently divided between those who want to deal with this crisis honestly, and those who don't. America, with its constitutional suspicion of government power, and its traditional belief that being wealthy is not inherently evil but generally a sign that you or your immigrant forebears have made the most of the opportunities that the country offered, was always likely to be the most robust in facing up to this. Europe is in full-blown denial - a condition that will presumably be reinforced by the surreal awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU. And Britain was, until about 20 minutes ago, dithering on the brink. But now, with Mr Cameron's speech, it has taken the leap. Not only did the Prime Minister say that national recovery was not feasible without cuts in public spending, but he implied that the future spread of prosperity (which he took pains to say was a Good Thing - not a point that would need to be made to an American electorate) depended on reducing overall dependency and encouraging economic self-reliance. What was more - and this was perhaps the most politically significant point - he reclaimed the moral language of public discourse. It was not a question of being either Right-wing or compassionate: true compassion meant enabling people to be independent and self-determining. We had heard the arguments before from Iain Duncan Smith about the cruel degradation of being trapped in welfare dependency, but now they were being given the imprimatur of the Prime Minister, who had clearly decided that he would make the case for the virtues of his own side. At last, those of us who have been battering our heads against the wall of the Modernising Project may be vindicated. To have accepted the premise of the Left-liberals that their team held the monopoly on goodness was socially irresponsible and tactically stupid. You can't win if you fight on your opponents" terms. Left-wing politics has often, in the name of "fairness," resulted in the merciless suppression of initiative, individual achievement and personal responsibility. If you persuade voters - through your collusion - that the Left has all the attractive attributes, you are simply selling your opponents" product for them and abandoning a whole other, entirely noble, view of the human condition. Mr Cameron and Mitt Romney now have a remarkably similar message: we do not want to protect the wealthy, we want to extend wealth. Whereas, the parties of the Left in the US, Britain and Europe say they want to protect the poor but what they are really doing is extending poverty. As my great hero, the economist Arthur Laffer, has said: "If you pay people to be poor, you will get more and more poor people." Here are Mr Cameron's words, but they could have come from Mr Romney or his running mate: "The mission for this Government is to build an aspiration nation... to unleash and unlock the promise in all our people. And for us as Conservatives, this is not just an economic mission - it's also a moral one. We have arrived at the era of Postmodern Conservatism. What will it take to fulfil the promise of what may (or may not) have been the most important, game-changing speech of Mr Cameron's leadership? Political nerve and rigorous argument. This is only a beginning: the Tories have just stepped up to the crease - or in American terms, come out of the dugout. It will be a hard and dirty fight against the assumptions of an overwhelmingly Left-wing intellectual establishment. But there is a coherent position to be defended here, which is not alien to an earlier incarnation of Cameron Conservatism: economic liberalism - the belief in the liberating power of free-market capitalism - is consistent with social liberalism. If you really want people to be able to make their own life choices, then you should want them be prosperous and self-reliant. Put those values into practice and keep explaining why. Stick with it.