What a difference a week makes.

In what was surely one of the finest party conference speeches for years, David Cameron, Leader of the Conservatives, showed Gordon Brown how it should be done.

In place of last week’s straining for effect and amateur theatricals, Cameron produced a professional performance of flair and depth of character shot through with real passion. It was also politically and philosophically coherent.

To compare him with Tony Blair — regarded by some as “the master” — is to judge serious accomplishment against fraud and artifice.

No, Cameron must now be viewed as the genuine article, a fully-fledged Prime Minister-in-waiting.

He even managed a rousing peroration, conveying hope and excitement — and more than a few tears from an ecstatic audience in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.

In a way it was eerily Thatcherite. There was the same scalding sense of challenge and mission, this time social as well as economic. After a period of “detoxifying the brand”, Cameron has moved rapidly onto traditional Conservative territory, daring to contemplate tax cuts while artfully not budging an inch from his earlier concerns.

He promised “sound money”, an end to political correctness, the health and safety neurosis, and, eventually, lower taxes.

A fierce attack on the educational establishment clearly resonated with the audience: there would be an end to the practice of “all shall have prizes” and of deliberate dumbing down. This was heady stuff. A catharsis after eleven years of poisonous frustration.

The Tory theme of the broken society was rehearsed at length. Old-style punishment was blended with concern for the causes of criminality. The work of former leader Ian Duncan Smith was well in evidence.

The speech was compelling not just because of the competent delivery but for its refreshing outlook, and the complete absence of the counter-intuitive nostrums of the Labour government that often sound as if they are made up by half-witted fantasists.

It was noticeable that the biggest rounds of applause greeted the most straightforward expressions of disgust with the present government’s worldview.

I imagine the Prime Minister is feeling rather bruised right now, especially after the tentative improvement in the polls last week.

On this showing, David Cameron can look forward to an even bigger bounce in coming days.

All he needs now is a General Election.