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A Clause 4 moment?

Nick Robinson | 12:18 UK time, Tuesday, 28 February 2006

The Tories have long craved one. Team Cameron now hope they've created one - they know what it did for Tony Blair.

I speak of a "Clause 4 moment" - a moment that convinces the country their party has changed.

Of course, today's document of Tory aims and values () can be no match for Tony Blair's ditching of Clause 4. That had shock value, it was daring and there really was a fight.

Until I dug out the library footage of the time, I'd forgotten that the vote in favour wasn't of North Korean proportions. It was roughly two-thirds for and one-third against. It was, in many ways, the symbolic end of a decade long struggle to re-position Labour begun by Neil Kinnock.

David Cameron (who you can watch here on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Breakfast) may be denied the fight which some of his advisers desire in order to prove that they're really changing. Many Tories grumble and moan while sullenly accepting the changes he's making as "there is no alternative".

But don't then imagine that what he's doing is merely PR fluff with no significance. For the Tories to sign up to a "moral obligation" to end world poverty; to building a consensus to tackle global warming; to testing their policies against what they do for the most disadvantaged, or to celebrating the role of government can play as a force for good is, to say the least, historically intriguing.

(Operational note: Most computers should open the PDF automatically - if yours doesn't, you can download Adobe Reader .)

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