Ignore the delivery: Mr Duncan Smith's speech was really rather interesting

His address is actually a straightforward repudiation of the social consequences of Thatcherism

To the same tune, the first words of Iain Duncan Smith's speech yesterday might as well have been: "He was boring, but he was decent."

Indeed, his speech-writers, presumably having consulted the polling evidence for signs of what the public actually like about IDS, inserted the "d" word into his address. And they obviously considered another virtue of his to be quiet determination, hence this passage: "Those who do not know me yet will come to understand this: when I say a thing, I mean it; when I set myself a task, I do it; when I settle on a course, I stick to it." All of which made the Conservative boss sound less like a leader and more like a labrador.

In any case (fortunately for the Conservatives), it isn't quite true. A year ago, in order to win IDS the election to the Tory party top spot, his people – with his acquiescence – ridiculed the Portillo vision of new, moist Toryism. Now safely elected, the same IDS allows his chairperson, Theresa May, to tell all those who voted for him what a bunch of utter bastards they are. After all, if they had been at all progressive (she might well have added), they would have supported Portillo in the first place. Moistness is in.

Oh well. If the man is deeply uncharismatic and far more flexible than he lets on, there are far worse vices than these – ask Osama bin Laden. Especially since (and I cannot remember this ever being the case before), if you were to read Mr Duncan Smith's speech, it would actually seem a great deal more interesting than it was when he delivered it.

It is interesting in tone. One of the things that sometimes makes Tories so intolerable is their constant need to have a scapegoat, their love of blaming someone for something. Peter Lilley famously "had a little list" of "scroungers, ne'er-do-wells and absentee fathers". Mrs Thatcher had "the enemy within". Over the years, teachers, social workers, loony councils, new age travellers, people who demonstrated rather than getting on their bikes to look for work, the BBC and the European Union have all been deployed for Conservative target-shooting. It was the way to get clapped.

But no such easy whipping boys are subjected to rhetorical flagellation in IDS's speech. You could almost sense the disappointment round the hall when they realised that no one was going to be slaughtered. Except the Government, and that doesn't count.

If that is interesting, the philosophy of the speech is extraordinary. Although he can't quite bring himself to say so, IDS's address is actually a straightforward repudiation of the social consequences of Thatcherism. Look at this section again.

"A generation ago the Conservative Party took tough and often unpopular decisions. We laid the foundations for the prosperity that many enjoy today and now we face a new generation of challenges. Millions more people own their own homes, but they fear to walk down their own street. We have more money – but we have less time for the things in life that are most important... We made people financially better off – but money isn't everything and in other ways, the quality of their lives declined." (My italics)

Then this: "All of us here want to remember the good things we did and there were many – but beyond this hall people too often remember the hurt we caused and the anger they felt. Well I say this to you: Never Again." Never what again? Never Thatcher Again.

To further emphasise the consensualist nature of the speech, examine IDS's use of examples. The outraged, authoritarian right intones the Chris Woodhead/Melanie Phillips litany that exams are too easy and too many kids are going to university. Not Mr Duncan Smith. Instead, he imagines what it must be like to be an "overworked teacher at an understaffed school comforting students who have just lost their places at university".

This rejection of right-wing pieties clears the way for an approach to public services that is similar to that of both Tony Blair and Charles Kennedy. Indeed if this conference season proves anything, it is that the parties are still converging on the key questions of how to run and fund health and education. They all believe in modified private-public partnerships, experimentation in service provision and – formally at least – in devolution of decision-making. Indeed, Mr Duncan Smith's speech coincides with reports that Mr Blair, Gordon Brown and Alan Milburn have reached an agreement on the setting up of virtually independent "foundation" hospitals.

Not that the Tories have yet achieved consistency. If, as IDS stated, devolution of decision-making is a principle, then it is hard to justify government using legislation (as he advocates) to force right-to-buy on housing associations. Of course, a Conservative government could simply empower them to sell up. But that exposes another contradiction. Part of the reason why we "have more money but feel less wonderful" is because the sum of the individual decisions that people make with the dosh that market capitalism gives them does not add up to social happiness. In the case of right-to-buy, we have been left with a dearth of social housing.

And how can one square a devolution of powers to police forces, with the intention that "we must bring Giuliani-style policing to every city in this country"? Suppose they don't want it? What then?

I hardly dare point out that the plans to have crack and heroin addicts compulsorily treated (while, incidentally, requiring no such thing from alcoholics) are hard to square with basic human rights, let alone "trusting people to make their own decisions". Let's see what happens when film stars' mums start shopping their famous offspring to the drugs squad.

And the promise to make a parenting programme available nationwide, while sensible (and fantastically New Labour), is also rather nannyish. Saying, as Oliver Letwin did, that the Conservatives will act "not through an army of social workers, but through voluntary and charitable organisations" is simply to further extend the long arm of the state to non-state institutions. Personally, I support it and in fact I thought that the Government was already doing it.

I am being ungenerous. There are some policies from this week that are dotty but plenty that are sensible. So sensible that only John Edmonds and the Daily Mail won't like them. So sensible that, within months, Labour will have stolen them. Stolen them, dressed them up, had a row with the unions about them, been done over by John Humphrys because of them and announced legislation to introduce them. Announced legislation in speeches made by confident and (quite possibly) charismatic ministers, who will be as publicly grateful to the Conservative Party as they are to all the other harmless and sometimes useful little think-tanks who spend so much time thinking up policies. Which is to say, not at all.

Ain't it all a bloomin' shame.

David.Aaronovitch@btinternet.com