Mr Osborne aims to ride out the storm

George Osborne's speech to the Conservative party conference today comes at a nervous time for the Chancellor. He has gambled on making painful cuts early to prune the deficit and get the economy growing by the time of the next election but now it has almost stalled once again. Worse, the backdrop of the crisis in the eurozone gets steadily gloomier: yesterday's admission from Greece that it is likely to miss its deficit reduction targets has caused markets to plunge again. The Chancellor and the Tories are talking a lot about growth this week, with the Prime Minister yesterday emphasising its primacy: the return of growth is the single most important thing for his re-election hopes.

Today Mr Osborne is sticking to his guns on his main aim: reducing the deficit. At the same time he is making a welcome gesture to hard-pressed families with his promise to fund a freeze on council tax for a further year from 2012. But he will have to make up the difference, for those councils that agree to keep council tax rises down, at a total cost of £805 million.

Meanwhile the Chancellor is under increasing pressure from some in his own party to set out a more detailed plan for growth. Others on the Tory Right are calling for tax cuts, particularly in the 50p top rate of income tax. But Mr Osborne's hands are politically tied. In truth, he simply does not have much room for manoeuvre if he is to meet his deficit-cutting targets. And as he argues today, he has no choice now but to do so: if he fails, he will risk a crisis of confidence in the bond market in Britain's fiscal management. That would be a higher price to pay.

Speeches at the Conservative conference this week from both Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith and London Mayor Boris Johnson reflect the continuing reverberations of August's riots. Mr Duncan Smith today likens the youths who rioted to Third World child soldiers. He warns against trying to arrest our way out of the problem. His solution is to target the benefits culture: today he unveils new plans to make dole harder to receive. He is right to target the benefits trap, which discourages some from working, although that amounts to a cultural change that will take some time to achieve. In the shorter term, we need to look urgently at other to tackle the behaviour of a section of British youth.

The Mayor's approach, which he will announce tomorrow, is more immediate: 25 new "boot camps", summer schools focusing on discipline and targeting thousands of London schoolchildren at risk of getting involved in crime. This is the kind of intervention that is proven to work - although the £2 million funding is modest. Preventing future riots will demand innovative ideas and serious commitment from government. But at least, as Mr Duncan Smith said today, the riots have shone a clear light on the problems we face

The crackdown on uninsured vehicles by the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, continues his trademark uncompromising "total policing" approach to crime in the capital. The Met aims to take 50,000 unlicensed cars off the streets. Such operations pay rich dividends: many of those driving without road tax or car insurance are also breaking the law in other ways too, such as carrying drugs or weapons. We welcome the Met chief's war on crime.