I prefer to have one vote, like everyone else

We haven't had a nationwide referendum in this country since 1975, now we face one on our voting system and it's a pretty low-key, perhaps to some invisible, affair. A few days ago a leaflet plopped through the letter box from a quango called The Electoral Commission explaining what the referendum is about and, I thought very fairly, defining the differences between the current voting system and the alternative on offer. My first thought about the whole affair is that it is worryingly low-key, probably because it concerns a subject that stirs interest in very few people.

The previous referendum, on whether the UK should continue to be a member of the European Economic Community, was a very high-profile affair. It was a topic that split both our major political parties down the middle (as it does today) and was headline news ever since the UK joined the EEC in 1973. With the dishonest and bullying approach that has marked every step of the project to create a United States of Europe, the UK was signed-up to the EEC without asking the people whether they wanted it and a referendum was allowed only once membership became the status quo. Even if the matter had been approached honestly by holding the referendum before we were committed to the disaster that has become the EU, the importance of the issue would not have changed. It was a major constituional shift for this country. Switching from the established form of voting for MPs (first past the post) to anything else is also a major constitutional shift.

That other systems are used in various parts of the UK and in various other types of election is neither here nor there. The established position is that the person who gains most votes in each constituency wins a seat in Parliament and introducing any other method of voting goes to the heart of our flawed but well-established system. My natural conservatism says that, for all its faults, the established method should not be changed unless there is very good reason to do so. Not only should it be arguable that an alternative would be better, it should be clear that that is so.

This makes me ask what is wrong with the current system. Various faults have been suggested. I don't pretend that what I am about to say is exhaustive but there are two arguments which seem to be most commonly promulgated and to be more substantive than any others.

First, it is said to be wrong that some constituencies are so dominated by one established political party that they can never change hands under "first past the post" and that this deprives voters who do not support that party from having an effective vote. In a way the objection is fair. Some constituencies have a long history of returning an MP of one party with 50% or more of the votes cast so no other candidate can get close to winning. Being in such a constituency myself I am well aware of the "wasted vote" argument. This problem also arises where one party regularly receives less than 50% of the votes cast. At 49% there only need be 2% cast for third party candidates for 49% to be victorious and at 43% of the vote a further 8% going to assorted small candidates means 43% wins.

Secondly, it is said that in more marginal seats people do not always vote for the candidate they want to win but in order to prevent another candidate being successful. A Conservative-Labour marginal seat puts pressure on those who might wish to vote for a third candidate to vote Conservative if they want to keep Labour out or vice versa. Again, it is a fair objection in that people can feel the need to vote against their conscience in order to achieve a result which is not what they really want but is better in their eyes than the other possible outcome. They know their chosen candidate has no real chance, so they engage in a damage limitation exercise.

Both of these objections are, in my view, consequences of the constituency system and, to a lesser extent, of the dominance of the main political parties rather than consequences of the voting system.

For so long as we elect MPs for individual constituencies there will be instances of "safe" seats. Some places contain so many people of like mind that a socialist or a conservative will always triumph even if party labels change. AV seems unlikely to make an difference in such constituencies. Similarly, some seats will always be likely to return an MP of one party or another party, third party supporters know their chosen candidate will not win. AV might lead to more people putting their first choice first but it seems inevitable that they will use their second vote for tactical purposes. Typically under the present system a LibDem supporter who wants to keep Labour out will vote Conservative where the LibDem candidate cannot expect enough first choice votes to win and under AV he will either vote Conservative with LibDem as his second choice or LibDem with Conservative as his second choice. Either way, once all but the top two candidates have been eliminated (which will result in Labour and Conservative remaining in the race in almost all Con-Lab marginal seats) his current tactical voting seems likely to be replicated whether he put Con first and LibDem second or vice versa.

It is only when we look at seats that are genuine races between three or more candidates that AV might make a difference to the outcome. There is certainly an argument for such seats to go to the candidate who receives the least disapproval, although that rather goes against the grain in an age of pasty-faced political leaders who go out of their way to avoid giving offence and thereby avoid advocating any sort or position of principle. Charming personality politics gives us Blair and Cameron as Prime Minister, two men without a coherent political principle between them. AV seems designed to ensure that beige is the secret to success. I don't find that particularly attractive.

Even less attractive is a system that results in those who are polictically savvy having more of a say than those who are not. For those of us who enjoy politics and take more than a passing interest in it, the opportunity to place multiple choices would be a delight - not least because we can don an anorak, try to second-guess the likely result and use our choices to eliminate someone we don't want to succeed. Those with little interest in politics but a desire to be part of the democratic process will have no incentive to approach the subject in the same way. They might not think it necessary or appropriate to place a second, third or other choice. Under the present system all who bother to vote are in exactly the same position, they have one cross to place on a piece of paper and their cross will either be against the name of the winner or against the name of a loser. Under AV everyone has the option to place as many preferences as there are candidates but no one is compelled to use all those choices.

One thing I find genuinely exciting about a general election is that I am in exactly the same position as a multi-millionnaire and tramp. We each have one vote. I am in the same position as the most intellectually brilliant and the window-licker. We each have one vote. I am in the same position as the most knowledgable political analyst and the person who has no interest in politics at all. We each have one vote. I am in the same position as a person of noble breeding and the latest in a line of illiterate potato pickers. We each have one vote. I am on a par with the Prime Minister. We each have one vote. Talking of illiterate multi-millionnaire window-lickers with no interest in politics, I am in the same position as Premier League footballers. We each have one vote. I find it unpalatable that we might adopt a voting system that allows those who take an interest to have a more effective say than Mrs Muggins who gets on with her life but votes every time because she is proud to have the right to do so. If I could see an advantage to AV that outweighs this disadvantage I might be persuaded to vote for the change. All I have heard so far is that it might allow a more concilliatory result in some marginal seats. To my mind that is an irrelevance compared to the levelling benefit of every voter being in the position of having one vote.

Addendum
In the comments (here) the good Mr Wadsworth disputes my assertion that AV leads to some having more than one vote. The case he puts is as follows: "Under AV everyone has one vote in each round of voting. Although your ballot paper might be shuffled from your first choice candidate's pile to your second choice etc, that is your one vote being shuffled around and in the final round it will be counted once." That is patent nonsense and the reason why it is nonsense illustrates the objection I raised above. A simple example shows why he is wrong.

Let's say we have a four-way marginal, Lab, Con, LibDem and UKIP. Mr A votes only for the UKIP candidate, who is eliminated in the first round. When the second round votes are cast Mr A is not involved in the process because he has not made a second choice. Mr A placed one vote and it was counted only once. Mr B also chose UKIP but he put LibDem second. In the second round his vote remains in play because he made a second choice. One could say he has had two votes, but let's not quibble about that just yet, at each of the first two stages of voting he has had one vote. On elimination of the LibDem chap in the second round, he plays no part in the third round. Mr A is involved in one round only, Mr B is involved in two rounds but neither plays any part in the final round. It is, therefore, quite obviously the case that not every vote is carried forward, only those who have voted for one of the final two candidates (or more if one reaches 50% while there are still three or more people in the game) have their vote carried forward to the final round.

I do not consider it a matter of semantics to say that Mr A has had one vote, Mr B has had two votes and those who places the Lab or Con candidates somewhere in their list have had three votes. Of course it is true that at each stage any one constituent has only one vote but that does not change the fact that some continue to have a say while others have their votes discarded because they did not make a sufficient number of choices to remain in play.

It is interesting to note that no commenter has yet suggested what benefits AV is meant to bring.

What do we vote for?

I received my voting card today, informing when and where I must go to vote for the forces of good in the forthcoming European Parliament elections. It got me thinking about something I find both interesting and amusing.

The very nature of our electoral system is that we cast our vote but there are no rules about what we should or should not take into consideration when deciding where to put our mark. There is a very obvious reason for this because we can decide on whatever grounds seem important to us, or on flippant grounds or on no grounds at all, we can vote tactically to prevent the election of someone we don't like even if the result is that someone we dislike a little less gets in, we can vote for a candidate knowing they have no chance whatsoever of being returned; it is a complete free-for-all. There can't be rules about it because there is no one to make such rules and no way of enforcing them.

One effect of free votes is that a particular candidate can succeed despite a clear majority not supporting any of his policies. If you need 15,000 votes to win and can attract 1,000 votes each from single issue fanatics on fifteen different issues, despite them not supporting anything you say on any of the other fourteen fanatical issues or any other issue, then you will be elected. Fair enough, although it's probably unlikely to happen. At least it's unlikely to happen in a general election where core issues tend to come to the fore, particularly if there is a realistic chance of a change of governing party. Nonetheless, it is inevitable that inconsistent reasons will lie behind the majority achieved by each successful candidate.

During every election campaign I can remember there have been debates on television and radio about what people think their vote is for. Some will argue that we should all vote for the candidate who will be the best representative for the constituents, others will argue that choice of party is more important and others still that a general election is really a vote for your preference as Prime Minister. People get quite unnecessarily heated about this when the reality is that each argument is valid to those who find it valid. If Mr Ordinary uses his vote for his party of choice and Mrs Ordinary for her preferred Prime Minister, each is equally in the right because it is a free choice to do what you want with your vote according to your personal judgment. In all but the most extraordinary of circumstances nutty and emotive issues are swamped by more general considerations, hence the changes of governing party in 1979 and 1997 and the fluctuating majorities held by those parties during their recent periods in office.

I still read suggestions that the current government is somehow illegitimate because it only polled 35.3% of votes cast at the last general election and each time I do I sigh and think of apples and oranges. They received 35.3% of votes cast under the current system of first-past-the-post constituency elections rather than proportional representation. Having won a majority of seats they are the legitimate government, no matter how much I dislike that fact. No one can say how many votes they would have received under any of the many versions of proportional representation nor what effect it would have had on seats won in the House of Commons.

I also read assertions that Gordon Brown is not the legitimate Prime Minister because he was not leader of his party when the last general election was won and Tony Blair said at the time that he intended to serve a full term in office. That assertion, too, is without substance. Under the system we have the leader for the time being of the majority party is invited to form a government, if he or she stands down and a new party leader emerges that new leader will be invited to form a government. You can't sensibly ignore one aspect of the whole process and claim that it removes legitimacy from someone appointed under the process that was in place at the time of the election. Poor Gordon is the legitimate Prime Minister, albeit a hopelessly incompetent holder of that office, just as he would have been had Tony Blair been run over by a bus a week after the election.

A highly visible aspect of voting decisions being affected by differing considerations is the way things happen in by-elections compared to general elections. The issues are different and having the spotlight on a single constituency allows attention to be brought to particular local and topical matters on which the incumbent government has a less than unblemished record. Innumerable examples exist of protest votes at by-elections resulting in the governing party losing the seat, only for it to be regained at the next general election - of course that doesn't always happen but historically safe seats for one party tend to revert to their usual holder.

European elections raise yet further issues. Support for the UK Independence Party soars far above its level at general elections because all three major parties seem keen on Belgian gravy being a fatty product whereas the people would prefer it to be weak and watery. In a way it is curious that elections to the European Parliament tend to revolve around our views of the EU and its institutions rather issues of policy because something like 80% of our laws now come from Europe. But then it is not really curious because any views on policy expressed by the electorate of one country out of twenty-seven are of no importance to the Brussels machine.

It will be interesting to see how far the vote swings against Labour at the upcoming Euro elections. There is little difference between the position of all three major parties on the EU so there is no reason to read a loss of votes for Labour as reflecting anything about their position on matters continental. Of course we can never know why people will vote as they will, but that won't stop the speculation, and jolly good fun it will be too.

Simple Harriet's moment has come

From every mainstream news source we are now hearing that which the world of blogology has headlined for months, poor Gordon is a political dead man walking. At every turn, and I really do mean every turn, he makes things worse either for the country or for himself (the two are not necessarily the same, at least in the short term). David Milliband's wimpish attempted coup last autumn came to nothing once he was photographed doing something embarrassing with a banana, and now rumours abound of simple Harriet rustling up support to take over command before the next election. The height of her ambition is exceeded only by the shallowness of her ability, but that has never stood in the way of vain egomaniacs before. She knows her only chance of glory is to take over before Labour risks annihilation at the next general election.

In a way she is the perfect choice for the Labour Party because she says almost all the things the idealist lefties love to hear. After more than twenty years in which socialist dogma has not been spoken by the Party leaders, the grass roots are baying not for action but words. It must be acknowledged that the ludicrous John Prescott did use socialist language at party conferences. That was his job, to keep the true believers happy by letting them hear the words they wanted to hear; and how the rafters shook with cheers when he uttered the "S" word. Yet he was the only one and he was just window dressing. He was enough to keep them on board, but not enough to satisfy them because the actions of the government were not accompanied by the necessary words. They have had the action, all the action their hearts could reasonably have desired. Massive increases in taxes, massive spending by government on all the projects they have claimed to be essential for socialism to be proved the true and right path of human progress, massive increases in the power of The State over the people. It's all there, it's all happened, it's all been tried. But it has not been accompanied by the correct words so it doesn't count.

In the eyes of true believers the absence of the label "Socialist" has been fatal to the whole New Labour project. For them nothing is socialist if it is not said to be socialist. Equally, everything is good if described as socialist. Hence their unqualified support for every repressive and oppressive tin-pot dictator who calls himself a socialist. No matter how many they kill and how many they impoverish, the socialist saviours are beyond criticism. When they intercept aid money and spend it on armaments, the resultant starvation is the fault of those who oppose them. Lists of proscribed books in Cuba are not evidence of repression but of purity in both thought and deed. Intimidation of political opponents is nothing of the sort, it is protection of the beneficial State against treasonous activities. The purpose of elections is to show support for the great socialist leader; the result of the election must, therefore, do just that.

It must be wonderful to have such deep belief, something so important that it sustains everything in your life and gives you hope and purpose. As with every fundamentalist religion it is never enough for others to act in accordance with the creed. Living in accordance with the ten commandments will not save my soul, I have to acknowledge I am doing so through belief that 2,000-odd years ago a middle-easterner was the son of god. Woops, not god, not a god, not just any god, the right god, the one with a capital G. What I do has the same effect on my life and those of people around me whatever the reason I say I am doing it, but that is not enough for believers. Somehow acts change their character and change their substance if accompanied by the correct thoughts and words; and this is so for fundamentalist socialists just as it is for fundamentalist Christians.

Friday's Times carried an article by a former Labour minister, Frank Field. He was appointed Welfare Reform minister in 1997 with the express role of "thinking the unthinkable". No social security benefit or structure was to be beyond his remit, he could pull down the whole edifice of state welfare benefits if he felt it right. Then he issued his first few reports and questioned the need for this and the need for that, questioned whether certain benefits encouraged indolence and discouraged work. None of it fitted traditional socialist dogma, so he became an ex-minister. His article in The Times is the single most powerful argument you could ever read against state initiatives to create employment. As he points out, no less than £75billion has been spent on these initiatives since Labour came to power 11 years and 9 months ago. That's just under £532million a month. It's utterly mind-boggling. £532million is equivalent to the gross monthly salary of more than 250,000 people on an annual salary of £25,000. It represents the income tax paid each month (at current rates) by about 1.7million people earning £25,000 a year or, if you prefer, 2.8 million people earning £15,000 a year. Mr Field described this as "an expensive failure", he described the record of the initiatives in actually getting people into work as "depressing" and the overall results of this sensationally huge amount of government expenditure as "derisory". He looked at it in practical terms and as a member of the party that is in government and introduced all this stuff.

For true believers the failure of this expenditure to produce results is nothing to do with faults in the schemes it financed. Those schemes had no faults. They can't have had because they were straight out of the student union lefty politicos' manual - The State was decreeing who should have what, nothing could be more beneficial. When Mr Field was a minister the head of his government department was simple Harriet Harman. Perpetually out of her depth as head of a complex department she was eventually shifted after so many gaffes that even the thick skin of Tony Blair could take no more. She was instrumental in Frank Field being removed from office because his criticisms of the very policies he highlighted on Friday were not what she wanted to hear.

How difficult the last dozen years must have been for simple Harriet. Despite being wedded to the religion of socialism, her own career has been more important to her. All the time she kept the "S" word away from her sneering lips you could see her frustration; yet she knew her own advancement and the high salary accompanying it would be at risk. Nonetheless, she has said just about everything else the party faithful wanted to hear, dressed in a code that avoided the "S" word but used it's cuddlier synonym "progressive". The faithful understood her, but still they and she were frustrated because the little people were being spared true enlightenment. How, they thought, could the little people be expected to understand the full glory of what the government was doing if they were not told it was socialism in action? Just that one word would make all the difference. Benefits payments to the indolent and feckless are currently viewed by many as undeserved hand-outs, if only they could be told these payments are redistributions to the needy from the greedy. Oh how the world would change. Oh how eyes would be opened to the true benefit behind this spending of £75billion.

Simple Harriet wants the top job in order to satisfy has massive ego, but she is also driven by another force. She wants to label Labour policies "socialist" because she believes that will make them deliver benefits. Benefits they have so singularly failed to deliver over the last twelve years. £75billion on job-creation schemes? A mere bagatelle. Let's do the same again and call it socialist, then it will work. It is not just in her facial features that she will remind the voters of Michael Foot.

Dave, be nice to Nick

Nick Clegg is in a strange position. As leader of the country's third political party he knows he has no chance of winning a general election and becoming Prime Minister, yet he also knows that a close result might leave neither of the major parties with a majority in Parliament so he could have considerable power by offering his MPs' support to one side or the other in return for a few policy concessions. As things stand today the prospect of a hung Parliament seems very unlikely, but you never know.

This week the Liberal Democrats are meeting and some interesting changes seem to be afoot. A party which has argued strenuously for higher taxation over the last decade now appears to be changing tack. It is hard to tell exactly what is going on because poor Mr Clegg is walking from one twisted knicker situation into another. One day he is going to reduce taxation, the next day there will be no overall reduction; one day he is going to cut government expenditure by £20bn a year, the next day he only thinking about it; one day income tax will be cut for the poor, the next day it is unaffordable. What one can discern as a distant vision through the dense yellow fog is that the general attitude at the top of the LibDem's is changing. Not long ago it was unthinkable for the leader even to hint at tax cuts and a reining-in of government spending, that we are getting confused hints now is a move in the right direction.

It is particularly interesting to see how this is being reported in the mainstream press because that has a significant effect on public perception. Generally the position is being put forward that the LibDems are proposing reductions in tax for those at the lowest end of the income scale and that it will be paid for by cutting unnecessary bureaucracy. It seems to me that this is part of a general realignment of all three parties in the light of the country going fast down the economic drain. Any realignment is likely to be very bad news for Labour, very good news for the Conservatives and could hit the LibDems either way.

The reason I am confident that it will be bad for Labour is that they can only move one way, back to their natural Marxist philosophical ground. For ten years Tony Blair was able to keep a lid on ranting lefty rhetoric. Of course the occasional dinosaur would surface from the bog, let out a large burp and then descend again, but on the whole the message he was able to send was that old-style interventionist economic management of the type that brought the country to its knees in the 1970s was a thing of the past. Many of us believe the tax and spend approach poor Gordon adopted when at Number 11 was little different from traditional old-Labour policy, especially when combined with the crippling red tape rolled out from Brussels and gleefully wrapped around the throats of British businesses by our government. But that was not the message being received by the public. The message was that Mr Blair's government was committed to the market economy. Now that opinion polls suggest Labour is facing annihilation in the ballot box it must show itself to be different from the alternatives in order to have any chance of saving its skin. The only path open to it is a move back to overt socialist economic management. In my view that is a recipe for a long spell in opposition.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, have spent the last three years projecting themselves as the new friendly and fluffy party. Just as Blair's smarmy charm worked so well electorally, so David Cameron's cheerful moderation and espousal of trendy do-gooding has hit a chord. No longer is his the nasty party, now it is just as cuddly and caring as Mr Blair's Labour. It is all a matter of image, of course. Because an election is approaching it is necessary for Mr Cameron to be much more specific about what he would actually do. He has played the "I'm a nice guy" card very well and, as part of that strategy, has adopted some curiously unconservative policy proposals in order to woo popular support. Any policy necessarily only woos popular support, however, while that policy is popular.

All the "vote blue go green" piffle of the local elections worked well while people thought man-made global warming to be both a reality and something they could change. Now that the theory behind it is facing increasingly strong challenges and the price of doing something about it would hit our way of life very hard, the game is changing. The game is changing in many other areas too because there is irritation at ever increasing taxes, disappointment at only marginally improving health care, despair at the inability of government to provide good education for all, disgust at snouts in the quango trough, frustration about increased official snooping and a realisation that the government has encouraged us all to live on a bubble of unaffordable credit. The default position has changed from even eighteen months ago. Instead of the government being seen to be credible and on our side it has become the architect of economic pain and social discomfort. How true the old perception was and how true the new perception is are beside the point because it is the prevailing perception which determines how new policy announcements will be received.

This time last year we witnessed a quite extraordinary event. The economy was already slowing, house prices were starting to fall and a little nervousness was in the air, yet still the government was holding up well in opinion polls even after ten years in power. Then George Osborne gave his speech at the Conservative Party conference promising a massive increase in the Inheritance Tax threshold and suddenly the mood changed. Almost immediately opinion polls swung heavily in favour of Mr Cameron and since then the floundering Prime Minister has been unable to say or do anything other than make matters worse for him and his party. But that does not mean that one speech could ever be enough to win an election. The question still remained whether the underlying public mood in favour of high government spending would surface again as the election approaches.

Against that background, reports that Mr Clegg's LibDems feel the need to cut taxes and government spending are highly significant. The significance is nothing to do with getting the LibDems into power, it is all to do with the mood of the country, because it helps to shape the underlying general perception of the right course to follow. Few will believe that cutting taxes and spending will ever be favoured by Labour, so if both opposition parties agree that it is the right course to follow it can only add to the anti-Labour sentiment. The more that sentiment becomes a prevailing opinion, the more people will wish to vote not just against Labour but for a possible alternative government. When a mood forms for change, protest votes get squeezed and practicalities take over.

Whatever one might think of the Liberal Democrats, they are a major party and received votes at the last election far greater than their representation in Parliament reflects (almost six million votes, 22% of those cast). This was by far their best result in a general election for many decades and included a large element of protest votes, people disenchanted with Labour but not persuaded by the Conservatives.

With Mr Clegg and his colleagues giving approval to a central Conservative Party principle they have, I believe, helped to tip the mood firmly in favour of the Conservatives as well as strengthening the anti-Labour sentiment. Time will tell whether continued economic upheaval will allow Mr Cameron to go as far as many of us would like, but I am fairly sure he will put both the green stuff and his promises to match Labour spending targets on the back burner and concentrate on creating clear water between his party and a thoroughly discredited government. He must remember to be polite and write a thank you letter to Mr Clegg.

Timing is everything for David Cameron

The fortunes of the Conservative Party in opinion polls changed dramatically last autumn during and immediately after their annual party conference. Two gaffes by Gordon Brown and one policy announcement by the Conservatives switched the polls overnight and Mr Brown's position has weakened ever since. It is worth looking at those events because I believe they justify Mr Cameron playing a waiting game and leaving the announcement of radical policies until quite close to the general election.

There is a long standing convention that all three major parties should be allowed a fair hearing during their party conferences. This does not mean that their opponents cannot talk about or criticise policy announcements made during the conference season, but it does mean that no other party makes policy announcements or engages in a publicity seeking exercise when it is someone else's turn to be heard. The convention merely reflects a fair approach to political debate and I have a strong belief in the essential fairness of the vast majority of people in this country.

Gordon Brown appears to have been at home with a bad cold the day fairness lessons were being taught at his primary school. He decided to try to upstage the Conservative conference by visiting troops in Iraq and making sure the press and television covered his visit fully. While there he announced that there was to be a reduction in troop numbers in Iraq by Christmas, only for his figures to fall round his ankles like knickers with weak elastic no sooner than he had uttered the words. In this double-headed attempt to show strength he displayed massive misjudgment. As a result, many who were inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt as a new Prime Minister withdrew their goodwill. It was a double-gaffe of massive proportions.

Added to that, the Conservatives made a policy announcement on Inheritance Tax which captured the national mood. The issue of Inheritance Tax deserves a musing of its own, for present purposes all that need be said is that the Conservatives' policy announcement was looked on favourably by the British public.

Since then the opinion polls have moved steadily in favour of the Conservatives and Mr Cameron to such an extent that something quite dramatic would be necessary for Labour to remain in government after the next general election.

We can quibble about the significance of opinion polls at this stage in a parliament, but I suggest that Mr Cameron can rely on the figures until such time as the tide show any sign of turning. His greatest challenge is to ensure that he does not lose support by making mistakes. A mistake that results in no loss of support is not a problem, what he must avoid is giving the government a rod with which to beat his back.

Many of us are old enough to have vivid memories of the the early 1990s. John Major had taken over as Prime Minister from Margaret Thatcher in late 1990 with only 18 months to go until the next election. His party suffered internal strife and was showing signs of being stale, having been in government with substantial majorities for over 11 years. In the run-up to the 1992 general election Labour was polling quite strongly and many thought the election was theirs to lose. Lose it they did. There had been doubts about the capability of their leader, Neil Kinnock, to fill the role of Prime Minister effectively. One might think he would have concentrated on staying calm and appearing to be statesmanlike, but in a massive error of judgment he held a party rally shortly before the election in which he unashamedly acted as though the election had been won. Just like Mr Brown's error in visiting Iraq when he did rather than a week later, Mr Kinnock's decision to hold a victory rally at the wrong time cost him dear. Timing was everything and his timing was as wrong as it could have been.

Mr Cameron has reached his present position on the policies he has announced to date. Many will need refining over the next two years, some will have to be replaced entirely due to changes in circumstances and in some areas there is still to be a major policy announcement. The key political consideration in the timing of refinement, replacement and announcement is how it might play with the voters. If it appears that the government's position in a particular field will become weaker, he must wait until Labour is in the deepest possible hole before he chooses the spade with which to pile the soil on top of them.

The area in which the government is most vulnerable is the economy. Mr Brown's shocking lies about the effect of the abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax (remember, he said no one would lose as a result) required a humiliating supplementary budget which did the government more harm than good. The harm it did to the government was five-fold: (i) it showed that Mr Brown's decision to abolish the 10p rate was flawed, (ii) it showed he had lied in saying there would be no losers, (iii) it showed disregard for low-paid people by not giving full compensation to everyone affected, (iv) it added significantly to government debt at a time when Mr Brown and his hapless puppet chancellor were proclaiming the need to control debt and (v) its timing, just before a by-election, made it look like a bribe handed out reluctantly in order to save a seat in Parliament. Labour's claim to be trustworthy handlers of the national finances took a severe mashing.

The world economy is now taking a pummelling but Mr Brown continues to assert that the British economy is well placed to cushion the blows. Week-by-week that assertion is being exposed for the bluster it is, an exposure made all the more believable because of the 10p tax fiasco. For Mr Cameron it is this fact that gives him his greatest weapon if he is to change tack and make the necessary massive inroads into government spending. There is plenty that could be done in this regard without touching politically sensitive areas such as the NHS, police, schools and defence, but that is not of itself sufficient reason to change tack now.

We know what will happen if he reneges from the current commitment to match Labour spending plans. The government will label it an attack on "beneficial" spending with any reduction in spending being measured in terms of lost policemen, nurses, soldiers, teachers and hospitals rather in the more realistic measure of lost quangos, spin doctors, management consultants and non-job bureaucrats. "Tory cuts" will be the watchword for the BBC for several weeks and there will be a specially extended Panorama programme in which the conclusion will be that there are some reductions possible in bureaucracy but more significant will be the reduction in patient care in the NHS.

It is necessary for Mr Cameron to wait until Mr Brown and Mr Darling can no longer explain how their future spending commitments can be funded. They will almost certainly never admit that that position has been reached but the figures on reduced tax revenues, increased benefit payments and rising inflation will speak for themselves. Those figures will allow Mr Cameron to say that the current spending plans cannot be afforded without massive increases in tax. He must be precise about the areas in which spending on bureaucracy will be reduced, concentrating on quangos, and he must give a cast-iron guarantee that a Conservative government will not employ a single spin doctor or political adviser at public expense.

Not only is it necessary for Mr Cameron to wait before he does this, it is also necessary for him to do it.