Conservative headquarters is fizzing with activity these days. The high command is on alert for a March election. David Cameron has taken to holding his daily 9.30am strategy meeting in the Tory war room in Millbank Tower, ready for the day when his operation will have to transfer from the Commons for the duration of the campaign. The manifesto just needs a few tweaks. The coffers are full. Discipline is being rigorously enforced. The party is straining at the slips, hungry to seize and wield power.
The events of this week showed the strength of the Tory position. Those around the leader relished Gordon Brown's discomfiture at the hands of The Sun and Jacqui Janes. Their efforts are now concentrated on accelerating the work of character demolition by getting the Prime Minister to debate with Mr Cameron on television. With barely 130 days left to a likely polling day, and the Tory campaign well underway, issues that were once used to define the party as reactionary – the environment, poverty, the NHS, immigration – no longer hang like millstones from the Conservative neck.
On Tuesday, Mr Cameron won another round of plaudits for a thoughtful speech on welfare and his ambitions for replacing "big government" with a "big society". There is quiet satisfaction, which stops just short of complacency, that the party has successfully navigated tricky waters on expenses, spending cuts and Europe. So if the Tory leader pauses to celebrate as he moves towards his fourth anniversary in office, which will take him past his three predecessors in the long-service table, it will surely be to mark how he has neutralised the negatives, secured his flanks and turned his party into a credible fighting force.
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