© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons for http://tribunecartoons.com

I’d agree profit isn’t a dirty word or idea but if this is a top line of rhetoric to be briefed out ahead of the PM’s speech at Manchester today then the party conference season has not gone quite as well for the government as they might have wished.

The speech last week in Brighton by the leader of the opposition was populist and generally well received. It also appears to have provoked some hastened offers from the government on the controversial ‘Help to Buy’ housing policy.

Briefly, Help to Buy involves the government underwriting personal mortgage risk and it is a policy which the chief economist at the Institute of Directors described, colourfully, as ‘very dangerous’.

But it did make for a cartoon.