Conservative party

As this morning papers’ show, the Tories know that their spring conference here in Brighton offers them a chance to change the narrative of this campaign, to get back on the front foot. William Hague’s speech, the first big set-piece of the event, tried to frame the choice facing the country at the election as being between ‘change or ruin’. Hague warned that if the country doesn’t return a Conservative government at this election, ‘it will be too late...too late to reverse the decline: the debt will be too big, the bureaucracy too bloated, the small businesses too stifled, the slope Britain is sliding down will be too steep.’ Labour will try and say that this language is shrill, a sign of Tory panic. But there’s a lot of truth to it.

Both James and Tim Montgomerie felt that William Hague must be more prominent during this campaign and Cameron has reached the same conclusion. Hague opened the spring confernece with a stark, bleak message: "And I say it is that most crucial election because I believe the choice for Britain is as stark as this: it is change or ruin." He then detailed the easiest illustration of Brown's appalling economic stweardship: a 13 year statistical progress of regression for which Brown, and Brown alone, is responsible. 'When Gordon Brown took over, this, our great country, was the 4th largest economy in the world. Now it is falling behind and forecast within 5 years to be the 11th, behind not just growing giants like China, but behind our neighbours France and Italy.

As the Tories prepare to head to the seaside, Tim Montgomerie has published a ten point plan to get the Tory campaign back on track. The plan is already causing much discussion in Tory circles. His main points are that the Tories need to sharpen their economic message, use William Hague more, sort out the structure of the campaign, warn of the dangers of a hung parliament and ram home to voters just how badly Labour has failed.   What is getting the most attention, though, is Tim’s suggestion that the Tories should talk about immigration. I tend to agree with Tim on this point. It was a strategic mistake in 2005 to talk about immigration so much but it would be an equally large mistake not to talk about it at all this time round.

Guido’s got the inside track that the Beeb have been told not to take the weekend off, and the Tory lead has been cut to five points in the Telegraph’s Ipsos Mori poll. A five point lead is hung parliament territory and Labour could win the most seats - further evidence, as if any were needed, that the force is with Labour. There are a couple of other reasons he may go now. Peter Hain has written an article for the Guardian, wooing Lib Dem voters (more on that later) – could that article be a prelude to the big announcement? Fourth quarter growth figures have been revised upwards, to a staggering 0.3 percent, which is encouraging but still low enough for Labour to run on a ‘Not The Time For Cuts' ticket.

Gordon Brown’s interview with the Economist is completely brazen. With a fine disregard for facts, and subsumed amid specious waffle, Brown declares that he’s been consistent on cuts. ‘I believe if you look at my interviews there’s absolute consistency in what I’m saying. We were saying right through the early stages of the crisis that it was important for there to be fiscal stimulus. And so the clear message was about fiscal stimulus. We said that at a certain point we would have to come in and announce our public spending plans for future years, but this was not the right time to do it. And it still isn’t the right time to have a full public spending round, because of the uncertainties.