The Conservatives, who are points behind in the polls, are losing MPs to the Eurosceptic UK Independent Party (Ukip) and are vulnerable to voter concern about the National Health Service (NHS).
And yet, several thousand of them left Birmingham yesterday after a conference that began with a defection to Ukip, seemingly confident about the battles ahead.
Political parties can be delusional, but Labour leader Ed Miliband is the explanation for Tory optimism this time.
A poll for YouGov yesterday – not untypical of the close to 2,000 taken in the lifetime of this parliament – puts the Tories on 31 percentage points, five behind Labour.
If replicated in next May’s general election, Labour would have a 60-seat majority in the House of Commons.
Simple strategy
The Tory strategy is simple: the party believes it needs to be within shooting distance of Labour before the campaign begins in earnest.
Then, and only then, will the British public, which rarely engages with politics, sit back and ask itself one question: does it want David Cameron or Miliband as prime minister?
On this question the Conservatives believe they will win. Almost everything about Cameron’s speech yesterday emphasised the presidential- style “Cameron v Miliband” character of next year’s campaign.
Cameron promised [delayed] tax cuts, an EU membership referendum, more apprenticeships, more houses and less interference from the Strasbourg human rights court.
“If you want those things, vote for me. If you don’t, vote for the other guy,” Cameron said, neatly turning a Miliband phrase back at him.
“This is a straight fight. It doesn’t matter whether parliament is hung, drawn or quartered; there is only one real choice: the Conservatives or Labour.
“Me in Downing Street, or Ed Miliband in Downing Street. If you vote Ukip, that’s really a vote for Labour,” he told delegates in Birmingham.
The word most commonly used by people when asked to describe Miliband is “strange”. Cameron seeks to portray himself differently.
“I’m not a complicated man. I believe in some simple things. Families come first,” he said, before emotionally banging the lectern as he defended his commitment to the NHS.
The emotion was genuine, but the public distrusts Tory policy on the NHS because of reforms implemented since 2010.
Budgets struggling
Cameron, in a bid to compensate, vowed to ringfence NHS spending in the lifetime of the next parliament. However, this will leave budgets struggling.
The irony of the “Cameron v Miliband” strategy – that Cameron is still a selling-point for the Conservatives – is lost on some among the party’s ranks, those who have never warmed to him.
The core of the policy message, meanwhile, is traditional Conservative fare: tax cuts, including a pledge to have no income tax on the first £12,500 of earnings.
More importantly for middle-income earners, the Conservatives’ normal support base, the 40p tax rate would apply only after people earned £50,000, instead of £41,500 at present.
TV viewers who watched clips of the speech could be forgiven for thinking otherwise because of clever speechwriting, but the tax cuts will be long delayed in coming.
The earliest they will be applied is 2018, or perhaps even a budget later. But, nevertheless, it gives the party a weapon for the doorstep.
In all, the £7 billion tax cut – “hard to see how it could be paid for”, the Institute of Fiscal Studies warned last night – means that spending cuts will have to be even deeper.
On Europe, Cameron pledged to curb free-movement rules – an undeliverable ambition, barring extraordinary developments, but it may help to get him beyond next May.
The strategy, however, only works if Ukip is neutralised. If it gets 15 per cent next year – which is possible – and if most of that comes from defecting Tory voters, then a Cameron majority is impossible.
Recovery
Putting the emphasis on economic recovery does little to reach voters tempted by Nigel Farage, as they are the ones most likely to feel they will never benefit from it.
Pledges on the EU do not work either, since Ukip voters distrust Cameron’s intentions and, anyway, want to quit, not to renegotiate membership.
Cameron’s speech comes on the back of chancellor George Osborne’s warning on Monday that years of spending cuts still lie ahead, including real cuts to popular benefits.
Such cuts – which will cost millions of families £500 a year – are an odd pledge by any politician eight months from the election.
However, they were deemed necessary because despite all of the talk about cutting the deficit, the UK’s national debt has doubled during this government’s period in charge.
Optimism
Cameron, mixing optimism with a call to voters to stay with them now that economic statistics have brightened, told voters not to abandon the sacrifices of the last four years.
“I say: let’s not go back to square one. Let’s finish what we have begun. Let’s build a Britain we are proud to call home,” he said.
The voters will decide in May.