In reshaping the Tory party, Cameron has been stunningly decisive. He understood that, until or unless the Tories were accepted as members of the human race by the liberal-minded BBC, they would be represented as freaks, deterring the swing voters on whom any party must rely for victory. His analysis was probably correct, though one can't ignore those Tory right-wingers who say Labour's collapse is now so unredeemable that the supposed horridness of "the nasty party" is no longer an issue. The fact is that the compact has been successful: the BBC does for the moment give Cameron a fair wind and the Guardian almost likes him. 

What looks like a commanding, even courageous, performance can, however, be interpreted in a different way. Conservatism has become the belief that dares not speak its name. The Tory leader may be tactically forthright but he sometimes appears intellectually timid. When the New Labour project was still in apparent working order only a couple of years ago, with the economy racing along, and "boom and bust" allegedly vanquished, it may have made a little sense for Cameron to accept that public expenditure should never be cut. At any rate, one could glimpse some sort of rationale. Now such a policy is indefensible.

A longstanding friend of both Cameron's and Osborne's explained to me: "He and George have been watching Tory leaders fail from John Major onwards, and everything they do is informed by that perception of failure." That means there are a number of subjects that can't be mentioned lest the old charges of Tory extremism be raised again. 

You have to be almost 50 to remember well the last time Labour got this country into trouble. Over such a long period of time it is easy to romanticise. The Tory manifesto of 1979 was in many ways a modest document, and hardly anticipated the economic and social upheavals of the following 11 years. Margaret Thatcher, more hedged in by political enemies in her own party and the Cabinet than is Cameron, was obliged to be cautious. For all that, the Tories in the years before 1979 were not only concerned with the resumption of power. They understood the magnitude of the crisis the country faced, and were not afraid to come up with new ideas to deal with it.

I know we have not yet had the Conservative manifesto, which may be bulging with exciting new policies. I also understand that the Tory leadership is worried that such good ideas as it does advertise may be snatched by the government, as has happened on several occasions. Yet I wonder whether fewer than 12 months before an election any party in modern Britain has been such an enigma to the electorate as the Tories are today.