Tory MPs have been happy for 12 months. Their mood improved last autumn when the opinion polls turned positive for David Cameron and they have stayed happy since.
But recent events have unsettled the Conservative parliamentary party. The tearooms of the Commons have been alive with grumbles about George Osborne and a concern that Vince Cable has been winning far too much airtime. A 10% Tory opinion poll lead would once have been greeted as cause for celebration, but a weekend survey putting the Tories at "just" 43% and Labour up to 33% has caused a return of anxiety. Tory strategists are telling MPs to expect the Tory lead to be whittled down to single figures over coming weeks as Labour reaps the rewards from its best press coverage for more than a year. But if Tory MPs are muttering again the mild panic has not reached the offices of David Cameron and George Osborne. Although David Cameron has a quick temper, he is remarkably cool when it really counts. He did not panic when Brown enjoyed his 2007 honeymoon and "The Second Coming of Gordon Brown's Bounce" hasn't fazed him either. Cameron and Osborne have been relaxed about conceding the stage to Brown and Darling for this immediate period. They note that Vince Cable's frenetic tours of the TV and radio studios have done nothing to prevent the slide in LibDem poll ratings (now below those bequeathed by the ousted Ming Campbell). The Conservative leadership believe that Brown may succeed in rescuing the banks, but he won't avert tough times in the real economy. The juxtaposition of a successful rescue of the big banks and a slow, painful slide into a real recession could, some strategists believe, be deadly for Labour. The view is that "Brown doesn't do empathy" and will fail to emotionally connect with voters who are losing their jobs and homes. One Tory is already preparing a viral video that mixes Brown's claim to have ended "boom and bust" with images of closed shops and headlines announcing redundancies.
In the next few days and weeks, the Tories plan to present themselves as the champions of the real economy. George Osborne has already reminded voters of his policies to freeze council tax, abolish Labour's new car duties and simplify corporation tax. He'll have to do better than that and knows it. Those policies are almost as small as the economic challenges are great, but the shadow chancellor has time to abandon his pre-crisis tactic of more or less matching Labour on tax and spend. Few fair-minded commentators will complain if he uses the scale of the current crisis to revisit his old policy of "economic disarmament". The man who rescued the Tories in October 2007 with his inheritance tax announcement has all of the political skills necessary to restore a significant Conservative lead.
