Conservative party

A year ago the electoral strategies of the two main parties seemed set. The Conservatives would stand as the party of prudence, claiming to have saved Britain from a Greek-style meltdown through austerity measures which, though painful at the time, had eventually borne fruit in the shape of a private sector-led recovery. Labour, meanwhile, would stand as the party for public investment, promising to repair what it saw as the damage wrought by cuts. Since then, things have got better for the Tories than they could have imagined. Not only did a threatened triple-dip recession fail to materialise, but revisions to economic data concluded that Britain did not even suffer a double dip.

The good news for the Cameroons on energy is that it looks like they’ll get an agreement by the Autumn Statement to take at least some of the green levies off energy bill. The bad news is that this means that the debate sparked by Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices for 20 months if elected is going to continue until, at least, December 4th. An agreement between Cameron and Clegg on energy bills does now appear to be close. The Lib Dem anger at Cameron using PMQs to try and bounce them into a set of concessions has been replaced by a fast-moving negotiation. As one senior Number 10 source says, ‘There’s lots of shouting and public posturing, but 12 hours later Clegg is signalling that he’s prepared to do business.

In the days before Ed Miliband went all Marxist/brave on energy (delete as tribally appropriate), the debate around energy was more about fracking than it was about freezes. Shale gas has taken a back seat while ministers wonder what on earth they can do about bills to take the wind out of the Labour leader's sails. But the political problems haven't gone away. The debate is still about whether the incentives on offer are enough for local communities to accept fracking pads in their area. MPs whose constituencies sit atop the Bowland Shale don't think the government is offering enough, and have continued to tell the Prime Minister that. He recently held a meeting with MPs interested in fracking, but those who attended complain that they got little out of it.

When Ed Miliband announced his eye-catching energy policy, Tory MPs hoped that their party would respond in kind with something similarly interesting to voters but that would really work. They hoped this would underline that the Conservative party is the party of government, while Miliband was only suitable for opposition. George Osborne's conference fuel duty freeze and his noises about green taxes and levies on fuel bills reassured many of them, but Sir John Major's intervention yesterday has highlighted the vacuum caused by a refusal by Number 10 to engage with what one strategist described to me as 'the footling little things'. One MP said after Major's speech: 'Number 10 is totally on the wrong page on this.

The coalition wants this week to be all about the GDP figures, out on Friday. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, Downing Street is confident that they’ll show the economy is continuing to grow at a relatively decent clip and is already working out how to make political out of that. They have, as Simon Walters reports, already prepared a video mocking Labour’s claims that the coalition’s polices would lead to a million more people on the dole. Ed Miliband’s circle expects that the GDP numbers will again be positive. But they take the view that as long as prices are increasing faster than wages, squeezing voters’ living standards, economic growth won’t mean much politically.

More than 140 of the 147 Tory MPs elected in 2010 have written to Adam Afriyie telling him to drop his amendment to the EU referendum bill. Given that Afriyie has previously suggested he’ll drop his attempt to bring the referendum forward to 2014 there is no support for it, it now seems doomed. This loyalist flexing of political muscle by the 2010 Tory intake will cheer Downing Street. It shows that the parliamentary party does, for the moment at least, want to stay united on Europe. It also indicates that a certain discipline is returning to Tory ranks as the next election approaches. Even six months ago, an amendment of this sort would have caused the leadership real trouble.

Historian turned Tory MP Chris Skidmore will be hoping for something good in today's reshuffle, especially after he was bigged up by Michael Gove from the stage at the Tory Conference last week as an old friend and one to watch on the backbenches. Praising his former adviser’s brain, the Education Secretary added ‘and most importantly of all ladies, he’s an eligible bachelor’. Which will come as news to Skidmore’s fiancé.

There are two more government resignations ahead of tonight’s reshuffle. John Randall, the deputy chief whip, has gone as has Chloe Smith, the Cabinet Office minister. Randall’s retirement has been overdue for a while now in the opinion of many in Downing Street. There is irritation at the way he put pressure on David Cameron to get rid of Andrew Mitchell during the plebgate affair. His departure and the expected elevation of several whips—Nicky Morgan and Karen Bradley are both in line for promotion—paves the way for a freshening up of the whips’ office. Chloe Smith quitting is going to tempt everyone to dust off the footage of that Paxman interview with her.