The most revealing point about the Tories’ position this weekend is not that they’re inching into the lead, but rather that they’re not streets ahead.   With Brown’s failure to regulate the banks prior to the financial meltdown, the year and a half of economic decline, the enormous deficit in the public finances, the fall in real incomes during this parliament, and a fragile recovery still lacking in jobs, Cameron had an open goal.   Yet he is still seen even after the third Leaders’ debate as more spin than substance, he has repeatedly made the wrong call on the economy, and despite Labour’s intense vulnerability he has no convincing alternative.

Nor is it difficult to see why he’s struggling.   The financial-economic collapse of 2007-10 has undermined the Tory case for unbridled markets and a scaled-down State.   Cameron’s ideological legerdemain to solve this problem by arguing for a Big Society, not a Big State, is a cop-out that doesn’t even persuade his own party.    This is not 1979 over again: Thatcher was assisted by the crisis in Keynesian social democracy in the 1970s while Cameron is hamstrung by the crisis in market fundamentalism.

Nor is Cameron’s fixation on unprecedented spending cuts a credible scenario.   There have only been 4 years in the past 40 where Government’s current spending has actually been cut in real terms, and it has never been cut in cash terms.   The idea that Cameron can slash and burn significantly more toughly even than New Labour’s programme to halve the deficit within 4 years is simply implausible, or at least without provoking a Greek-style level of crippling social unrest.   And if he fails to get an overall majority, as seems likely, but still attempts a scorched earth policy of unprecedented dimensions, can his survival be measured in more than months?

Thursday is not the end, whatever happens.   It is merely the first act in a drama of fundamental political change which will be resolved, not by one day’s voting, but by continuing struggle over many years.

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