In some areas, there is an absence of ideas. In others, there are ideas, but the Tories are not very anxious to let us know what they are. Cameron usually does not dare speak about immigration — again, out of fear of the BBC's response — though a majority of Britons, including many immigrants, are quietly worried about it. Europe is generally off-limits for similar reasons, though Cameron at least has half a policy here — the long-deferred pledge, made to the Tory Right during his leadership campaign, to separate from the centre-Right integrationist parties in the European Parliament — which has caused him some grief with the BBC and the liberal media. 

Rhetoric about our "broken society" is hardly contentious, but the policies to put it back together again are either vague or unconvincing. The only area in which there appears to have been much new thinking is education, where Michael Gove, though much more circumspect as a politician than he is as a journalist, has dared to produce some new (in fact, often old) ideas about giving more power to parents. Otherwise, Tory policy is remarkably unambitious. Cameron and the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, are not merely terrified of suggesting that the NHS could ever be reformed. The biggest and most inefficient bureaucracy in Europe must continue to receive increases in real terms in its budget for as long as the Tories are in power.

Tory caution has been most evident in public expenditure. It has taken the most severe economic crisis for 80 years, and the prospect of the largest public deficit this country has ever faced, for Osborne to prise himself away from the mantra about "sharing the proceeds of growth" to acknowledge that there may have to be cuts — or, at any rate, a reduction in the increase of public expenditure. Even so, Lansley was stamped on by the Tory leadership when he recently revealed that, apart from the NHS and the international development budget (why should that be sacrosanct under a Conservative government?), there might have to be cuts of 10 per cent across the board.

Not in front of the children. Everyone knows there will have to be savage cuts in government spending after the election. Labour knows it, the Tories know it and so does the electorate. Yet so shell-shocked are Cameron and Osborne as a result of their long years out of power (poor dears) that they dare not be candid and truthful. (One might mention here that the Shadow Cabinet does not appear to be the most outstanding in human history.) Politicians may not often win elections by promising tax increases and reductions in expenditure, but they can lose them by appearing vague and shifty and opaque. It is very difficult to imagine Margaret Thatcher in similar circumstances refusing to level with the British people.

When Brown repeats again and again in the House of Commons that Cameron is short on policies, I am afraid he has a point. Of course, if the Tory leader were less bashful, more willing to share such secrets as his box of tricks may contain, the Prime Minister would accuse of him of wishing to dismantle the welfare state. One can see that he has to be careful. But he needs to attend to another concern too — that he approaches the general election not so much as the "quiet man" Iain Duncan Smith laid claim to as an unknown quantity. Ask people who don't know or care much about politics what David Cameron and the Tories stand for, and you will see a blank look creep over their faces.