Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron walks on stage to deliver his speech to the Conservative Party Spring Forum, Sunday, February 28, 2010.Photo credit: Andrew Parsons

During the Tories’ conference in Brighton at the weekend, Conservative leader David Cameron – with no notes, and the Tory lead down to an alleged two points – rallied the troops with a “Let’s win it for Britain” cry, something that’s worked for football teams in the past.

Cameron told the assembled faithful, “[T]his isn’t an election that it would be quite nice to win, because we’ve got some quite good policies, or quite good to win, because some of these people would make quite good ministers. It is an election we have to win because our country is in a complete mess, and it is our patriotic duty to turn it around and give this country a better future, and I think everyone in this country knows.”

Then he drove the knife home: “I think everyone knows that another five years of Gordon Brown would be a disaster for our country.”

Read the full text of Cameron’s speech here.

Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron listens to George Osborne's speech at the Conservative Party Spring Forum in Brighton, Saturday, February 28, 2010. Photo credit: Andrew Parsons

But did it work? Nope, wrote The Financial Times’ Matthew Engel. “What a moment! What an opportunity! What a letdown!” Engel called the speech “well crafted” and “well delivered” – but clarified, “He just didn’t have anything to say.” Even Cameron’s criticism of Gordon Brown seemed tepid; Engel wrote that Cameron “really seems to be finding it hard to produce a rational critique of the PM.”

But perhaps the most damning thing of all, Engel wrote, is that not even the Conservative Party could get fired up: “And not once was the speech interrupted by a standing ovation, that trick of faux-enthusiasm that enabled the Tories to raise the roof for their leaders even in the darkest days.”

The Times is even questioning why Cameron wants to be Prime Minister in the first place. Writing that Conservatives still stand a pretty good chance of winning a majority in Parliament, The Times, a leading editorial today, said, “winning is not enough if victory does not supply the clear mandate for change that David Cameron, once again, fell short of defining yesterday at the Conservative Party spring conference in Brighton.”

The paper concluded, “David Cameron has shown us repeatedly that he could be prime minister. He has yet to show us why he wants to be.”

Michael Brown, in The Independent today, wrote that a low-level depression and “jangled nerves” characterized the “bedraggled” Tory Party’s conference yesterday. But while Brown look favourably on Cameron’s performance – he “roused the faithful with his usual off-the-cuff eloquence” – this may not be Tory’s year: “[T]he cloudy skies as he left Brighton suggest that this 13-year Tory winter is not over yet.”

Meanwhile, Cameron’s competition, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and a man for whom the revelation of his many varied foibles seems to be actually causing a surge in popularity, took a bit of a drubbing. London Mayor Boris Johnson, in his regular column in The Telegraph, wrote today that he’d spotted a Sunday headline that gave him pause, to say the least: “Brown on course to win election.”

“When I had regained my breath,” Johnson wrote, “I thought of some other propositions the headline writer might have touted – with an equal measure of foundation. How about ‘Pope on course to win Wimbledon’? Or ‘Simon Heffer on course to win Miss World’? Or if you want a more direct analogy, what about ‘One-legged man on course to win arse-kicking contest’?”

Citing information from the punters at Betfair.com, Johnson says a Tory victory is pretty much a guarantee – because Brown’s government has run so disastrously off the rails, especially in the realms of the economy and increased regulation.

William Rees-Moggs, in The Times today, also noted that the Conservatives’ greatest weapon is Brown himself: “In this case, people very much want a change, and most of them probably see Mr Brown as a failed prime minister. The Conservatives look forward to the election debates because they expect to bring out the contrast between an optimistic and a deeply pessimistic leader.”