Buried amongst all the material about Tony Blair standing down is something very close to us here in Balsall Heath. The Tory leader David Cameron has been writing on his own blog about spending two days in the neighbourhood.

It’s a place which has always made an impression on the man. He was here before, during and after his own leadership contest and teamed up with the Balsall Heath Forum and the Chamberlain Forum to give a speech (which you can listen to here on Podnosh) about the role of community in future Tory policy. How does he summarise what he is learning:

we’ve got a serious fight on our hands to build a responsible society that is the kind of society people admire and want to be part of. I know we can do it because most people in this country, like the people I’ve met here, are decent, hard-working and committed to their communities. We’ve got to much more to make sure that those are the values that win out.

It’s an act to be admired, not least because it has been built on a growing understanding of the neighbourhood and sufficient trust among the people who live here to be able to pull off so much time away from Westminster.

via thestirrer