In this exclusive interview, the Republican presidential front-runner tells Matthew d’Ancona why he is speaking at the Conservative conference, and says that Cameron has the youth, exuberance and determination to be a Tory JFKDavid Cameron was only one year and 17 days old on 26 October 1967, when John McCain was shot down in his A4 aircraft over Hanoi and taken prisoner by the Vietnamese. Almost four decades later, the two politicians have been brought together by a shared ambition to govern their respective countries — frontrunners to be prime minister and president — and a shared conservative purpose.

Maurice Saatchi says that the dull terrain of modern politics is the breeding ground of voter apathy and cynicism: the Tories must ‘climb the hill’ of idealism once moreAll proponents of ‘the centre ground’ in politics take satisfaction from analogy with the game of chess. Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world chess champion, on whose scientific principles chess is now based, said it was always good, on principle, to take an opponent’s centre pawn.

It was all there at the K Club last weekend — just what it had always said on the tinIt was all there at the K Club last weekend — just what it had always said on the tin. The passion, the best golf and golfers in the world, a glorious setting, rain, sweat and tears, an emphatic triumph for Europe and, of course, the craic. I was on the front row of the barrier overlooking the 16th green on Sunday — where I had stood for four hours — and shook the hand of Bill Clinton as he walked to the scene of the denouement.