Douglas Hurd attracted a huge audience for his talk on the future of the Conservative Party. Challenging the assumption that Cameron's approach to the leadership is the triumph of spin over substance, Lord Hurd provoked a wide range of questions from the audience, from the issue of racism to the fascinating counterfactual of what a Hurd government would have looked like.
Lord Hurd began his talk by drawing a historical parallel between the task facing David Cameron and that that Robert Peel faced in 1832:
He then went on to consider the vexed issue of Europe and how Cameron can approach it without tearing the Conservative Party apart:
In the final section of his talk, Lord Hurd examined the West Lothian question and confronted the collapse of Conservative support in the North and Scotland: