January 2010 wasn’t the best of months for the Conservatives. Despite that they remain steadily out in front in the national opinion polls. The gap, however, has certainly closed somewhat as many expected it would in the months before a General Election. Whether or not this is the start of a continuing trend or simply a reality check as voter being to consider the real rather than the hypothetical question of for whom should they vote.

David Cameron is so frequently compared to Tony Blair and by the same token Gordon Brown with John Major that it is worth looking for clues in the first few months of 1997.

During the winter of 1996-7 Conservative ministers tramped in front of the microphones, making the only claim they could reasonably make about the dire opinion poll position of their divided and exhausted party - that history shows the gap between parties narrowing, with the Government picking up support as an election approaches and that they expected things would be much closer than the polls suggested.

Broadly speaking this did not happen. Certainly some froth was blown off Mr Blair’s cappuccino from the dizzy heights of 25 point leads, but the expected landslide came about. However from January to April New Labour made very few mistakes. The policy mantras were by then finely honed, Mr Blair had slain his dragons, he was firmly in charge of his party and his team looked convincingly like a government in waiting. 

During January 2010 David Cameron still looks like a smooth performer, generally unruffled in the media and with an instinct for what not to do on camera. Other similarities with New Labour’s cakewalk in 1997 are less clear. The Conservative Party is patently less at ease with what David Cameron stands for than Labour was with a resurgent market-led social democracy in an immediate post-communist world. The financial crisis has meant that every party must re-evaluate its positions for the next Parliament. For the ill-at-ease Conservatives this has meant an opportunity to challenge Mr Cameron’s apparent acceptance of the New Labour consensus on the funding of public services.

A General Election year also means that ‘the team’ must come out of the cupboard in which they have been, seemingly, locked. David Cameron has succeeded brilliantly at ensuring that very few Conservative shadows beyond himself, George Osborne and William ‘Pop Boy’ Hague appear much.

The botching of proposals for married couple tax allowances shows the dangers of this approach. Suddenly different lines were emerging and Mr Cameron had to admit having he had ’screwed up’ as the only practical way of closing the story down.

Aside from the long-term wisdom of suggesting that tax advantages are a good reason to commit to married life, the episode also showed that the Conservatives are far from settled in their view of how they will manage their fiscal plans. Bold proposals for an emergency Budget within 50 days would, presumably, mean some idea at least of what it would involve. Little has emerged. The need for such a budget has since been played down. I suspect that David Cameron has known all along that austerity wouldn’t be popular.

Always best to ask somebody else how you look - and someone more objective than your wife is advisable.

Poster launches are something leaders can control. Mr Cameron ought to know something about agencies and how they are managed but it is all so much more difficult when the person in the photograph is yourself. I have no great insight into the detail of the Conservative campaign but I don’t expect we’ll see the same absurdly airbrushed image of ‘Dave’ at the next poster launch. The airbrushing was a mistake only acting to underline one of Mr Cameron’s negative - many voters see him as all presentation and no conviction.

Of course when the team comes out the cupboard they don’t just mess up their leader’s media, they mess up their own. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, appears to be well out of his depth. Getting caught fiddling the figures is never good and on a serious subject implied a cavalier disregard for the fears this kind of media raises. Grayling’s appearance on screens should lighten Labour hearts - it must be worth a few votes every time.

Matters may improve, but at present the Conservative team looks unconvincing, certainly less so than Tony Blair’s Shadow team. Brown, Straw, Cook, Mowlem, Dewer, Cunningham, Mandleson, Prescott, Blunkett, Beckett - OK so there was Ron Davies, but that aside it all had a bit more gravitas. Maybe there is a cunning plan - after all ‘Dave’ has now been around for quite a while - in fact ‘Dave’ has become part of the political furniture - not much of a change really.

How much of this matters is a moot point. If the country has made up its mind then all of this may amount to simply the blowing away of froth. The difference may be that, while there may be a settled view on Labour, the electorate is far from content that the Conservatives are a convincing alternative. If February and March continue in the same vein for the Conservatives then Mr Cameron could yet have a problem but as it stands it is his election to lose.