Opposition leader David Cameron has delivered his speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester.

Cameron told delegates there would be “painful” cuts in public spending, promised to send more troops to Afghanistan and stressed the importance of confronting “Labour’s debt crisis.” He also pledged to modernise the pension system, “break the cycle of welfare dependency” and cut back on bureaucracy to make life easier for entrepreneurs.

Cameron’s speech brings conference season to an end. Leaders of the three main parties — Cameron, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats — have all laid out their plans for Britain ahead of a general election due by June 2010.

The ‘word clouds’ below have been generated using the complete texts from each of the leaders’ keynote conference speeches, in the order they were given. At first glance there are some striking similarities and fascinating overlaps — but we will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

How did you think each of the leaders performed? Who did you find the most convincing? Is David Cameron ready to lead the country?

Keywords from Nick Clegg’s speech:

Keywords from Gordon Brown’s speech:

Keywords from David Cameron’s speech:

The Conservatives will get a chance to show they are ready for office at their annual conference in Manchester. After 12 years in opposition, the party could be on the verge of returning to power in an election due by next June.

Conservative leader David Cameron has said they will set out plans this week for reducing the country’s gaping budget deficit and unveil a “massive” programme to cut unemployment.

Our team of reporters will be looking for details of what a Conservative government would hold in store and aim to give a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the conference. Comments are open so please share your thoughts and opinions!

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised to clean up politics, get tough on crime in his keynote speech to the annual Labour Party conference in Brighton. He also pledged to address the bonus culture that many blame for the financial crisis.

The ‘Word Cloud’ below (click the image for a larger view), produced by Wordle, shows the words he used most frequently.

The speech was an attempt to rouse his beleaguered party and win back the middle-class voters who flocked to Labour under Tony Blair. The latest opinion poll from Ipsos Mori put Labour down in third place for the first time since 1982.

Reuters Chief Correspondent Keith Weir, who is live blogging the Labour conference, said the key themes that struck him were Brown’s focus on families, health, crime and middle or mainstream issues.

What did you think of Gordon Brown’s speech? Have your views on him changed? Do you think he can still win a general election next year?

The Conservatives might be wishing they could have held their party conference before Labour.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's address to his party conference in Brighton on Tuesday has thrown down a flood of new ideas, policies and initiatives from faster cancer diagnosis to choosing how Britain votes in what read more like an mini-election manifesto than a speech.
Brown played to his strengths (policy) and avoided trying to overcome his well-known weaknesses (not much of a political entertainer) in public. Trying to be someone else could have been a disaster for a man way behind in the polls to the Conservatives.
Whether it will be enough to make any difference to the polls remains to be seen -- Labour needs a miracle there after all.
But, for now, going for the policy jugular seems to have done the trick -- giving his browbeaten party something to get excited about and hitting the Conservatives where it hurts.
David Cameron's Conservatives have been accused of not giving enough detail on how they would govern the country if the polls are correct and they are to win power next year.
They will have to start showing their hand soon if they are going to convince voters that they have the ideas to run the country and aren't just a vote for change for the sake of it.

There haven’t been many highlights from the podium at this year’s Labour party conference so far, but business minister Peter Mandelson pulled the cat out of the bag.
A rip-snorting rouser of a speech on Monday — full of gags and inspirational lines — has energised the party faithful and left commentators drooling.
It was just what Labour needed given all the negativity around the party at the moment.
Way behind in the polls, scrambling for policies that will capture the public mood and seemingly doomed to defeat at the next election to the opposition Conservatives, a week-long conference in sunny Brighton could easily turn into a painfully long few days.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown takes to the stage on Tuesday and must follow Mandelson’s lead if he is to convince the doubters in his own party and beyond that he has what it takes to reverse Labour’s fortunes.
Brown is not known for his imaginative speeches but he needs to find one now.
He did it last year — when plotters in his party wanted him out.
Can he do it again?

The Prime Minister is on the move — and I will be following close behind.

I’m Sumeet Desai, Senior Reuters economics correspondent and over the next couple of weeks I will be with Gordon Brown as he travels to New York to the United Nations general assembly and then on to Pittsburgh for the eagerly anticipated G20 summit.

Then it is back to Britain — we will be at the seaside in Brighton for the Labour Party’s annual conference.

I will be live blogging throughout my journey, sending regular news and thoughts via my Twitter feed, which will appear in the box below, and will also post video updates from my travels with Gordon.

It’s goodbye to buckets and spades, and hello to Brum.

The Conservative Party is meeting in Birmingham for its first conference there for 75 years, away from the seaside B-list of Bournemouth, Blackpool and Brighton.

The return is long overdue, says David Willetts, who was brought up in the Midlands city.

“Birmingham sadly has gone through a period when it was deeply unfashionable,” the Conservative higher education spokesman told me ahead of the conference.

He says the party owes a priceless debt to Birmingham and in particular its 19th century Liberal mayor and MP Joseph Chamberlain.

To redress the neglect Willetts, once dubbed “two brains” for his academic demeanour, has written a pamphlet “Conservatives in Birmingham” for the Centre for Policy Studies.

Without Chamberlain’s 1886 split from the Liberal party over home rule for Ireland - which he opposed - and subsequent alliance with the Conservatives at the head of the newly formed Liberal Unionists, the Tories might have declined into the kind of minority agrarian or peasant party found in Continental Europe.

The coalition and ultimate merger into the Conservative and Unionist Party “meant Britain avoided the Continental pattern of politics with a traditionalist rural party and a separate rationalist liberal free market party,” Willetts writes.

The Conservatives became for the first time “a significant urban force …  and for the first time it appealed to the urban middle class.”

The merger laid the foundation for the dominance of centre-right government in Britain in the 20th century — unlike on the Continent where the centre-right has been split, weak and often out of power.

  Unsurprisingly, it’s a totally different mood at this year’s Labour Party conference in Manchester.Last year in Bournemouth, they talked about crushing the opposition Conservatives for a generation as the party celebrated a 10 point lead in the polls under their new leader Gordon Brown.

Many were urging Brown to make the most of it and call an early election before the economy turned down. He really must be wishing he had.

A year on, Labour is facing the prospect of a total wipeout at the next election and Brown is the most unpopular prime minister in 70 years.

“Low key” - is how the wife of one Cabinet minister described the atmosphere so far. That’s an understatement. The normally raucous conference hotel bars had scant few faces in them even at 9pm as the lobbyists and politicos who usually pack them out decided to give the first day a miss.

Delegates will have woken up Sunday morning to an Observer newspaper predicting eight Cabinet members would lose their parliamentary seats at the next election and David Cameron’s Conservatives winning a landslide victory.

Cabinet members have been putting on a united front, saying it wasn’t the right time to be thinking about changing leader but a lot of people here are wondering whether Brown can hold on.

“He’ll go by July,” one former minister predicted to Reuters.

The prime minister’s aides, however, said that was just plain rubbish. “Who do you want dealing with an economic crisis? Gordon’s got the knowledge, Gordon’s got the relationships,” said one.

They might have a point. A poll for the Independent on Sunday newspaper showed the Conservative lead over Labour halved in the last week.

It’s still 12 points though. Until that changes, the leadership question will not go away.