I was rather touched by the reaction of the CND spokesman who said (and I am not making this up) that my findings must be wrong because they did not match the views of people who went to their street stalls and public meetings. He also reminded us that the results contradict CND’s own recent poll, which found a large majority in favour of not buying new nuclear weapons, though their question omitted to mention that the existing system is due to be decommissioned.

But you know you’ve touched a raw nerve when you start being denounced in the official annals. On Friday a Nationalist MSP from Glasgow, Bill Kidd, introduced a motion at Holyrood proposing:

“That the Parliament looks critically at the results of a new poll on support for nuclear weapons in Scotland commissioned by Lord Ashcroft; believes that the result stating that 51% of Scots want the Trident nuclear deterrent to be replaced is misguidedly being used to suggest that a majority of Scots support keeping nuclear weapons in Scotland; understands that the results of this poll were intended to challenge the findings of a recent poll commissioned by the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament that showed a decisive 75% majority of the Scottish public is against both the cost and the reasoning behind the UK Government’s intention to keep all of its nuclear weapons stationed in Scotland; understands that, while Lord Ashcroft conducted the poll to supposedly show that “more than half of Scots are in favour of nuclear weapons”, the poll showed that only 37% of Scots believe so in principle, compared with 48% who do not; questions the integrity of a poll that, it understands, was privately paid for by a wealthy Tory backer; considers that Lord Ashcroft is spinning the results, and believes that he should stop doing so and accept what it considers the fact proven time and again that Scots want rid of nuclear weapons.”

Where to begin? I did not conduct the poll to “show that more than half of Scots are in favour of nuclear weapons”, but to find out whether opinion is as black and white as had been claimed; as I suspected, it is not. It is quite right that my survey found 48% saying they opposed the UK having nuclear weapons in principle, with 37% in favour – but this does not render invalid the answer to the next question, which asked what people wanted to happen in practice. My finding that 51% of Scots want a replacement for Trident, while only 34% would give up nuclear weapons completely, reflects the shift in opinion that often occurs between the ideal world and the real one. If most people really did want Britain to get rid of nuclear weapons when Trident is decommissioned, they could have said so.

It is amusing to see the SNP questioning the integrity of the research on the grounds that I paid for it. Curiously they did not express the same view in their press release highlighting my survey of marginal seats in March, which showed a number of potential SNP gains from the Lib Dems, or when they welcomed my “super poll” at the end of last year which gave the SNP a 6-point lead over Labour.

These days, most polls (including my own) are published in full, so anyone can look in detail to see whether a survey shows what it is reported to have shown, and compare findings that seem at first glance to contradict each other. This is a welcome development in understanding public opinion which can serve as a useful reality check for those astute enough to use it.

But the rush to dismiss or discredit inconvenient poll findings – to shoot the messenger – is a hallmark of a political movement that is going nowhere. In 2008 Ken Livingstone threatened to complain to the Market Research Society about a particular polling firm on the grounds that it kept publishing “implausible” surveys putting Boris Johnson ahead in the race for Mayor; we know how that story ends. Likewise my own party’s failure, for a decade or more from the mid-1990s, to come to terms with how the public saw it despite mounting evidence. More recent, and to me more surprising, was the insistence on the part of US Republicans last year that the published polls were wrong and Mitt Romney was on course to become president.

When someone asks the voters a sensible question it is worth studying the answer. But if the SNP wish to continue believing that most Scots are unilateralists, and that this will help to bring about an independent Scotland, they are of course welcome to do so.

The poll, carried out in February, found 60 per cent of Scots saying they opposed “the UK Government buying a new nuclear weapons system to replace Trident”, with only 14 per cent in support. Quite a margin, which is at least partly explained by the preamble to the question, which was as follows: “The UK Government plans to replace the existing Trident nuclear weapons with a new system, at a cost of £65 billion”.

The main problem with this question is not the use of “UK Government”, which is at least factual even if it was intended to serve as a kind of dog whistle to independence-minded respondents. And since for most people one multi-billion pound number sounds much like another, nor is the stated cost (even though it is something in the region of three times the true replacement figure: £65 billion includes the estimated running costs for thirty years, though CND evidently thought that pointing this out would complicate things too much).

Most importantly, CND omitted to mention (perhaps they thought it would have made the question too long) that the government plans to replace Trident because it is coming to the end of its useful life. As it was, the question allowed those polled to assume the government wanted to spend billions on new nukes just for the hell of it. Looked at in that light, the results are hardly remarkable. Even so, the numbers served CND’s purpose, and were duly seized upon by parts of the Scottish press, and the SNP, which declared the issue a huge opportunity for the independence campaign.

As we know from their attempt to rig the referendum question, the SNP has form on this sort of thing. Trying to show that people think what you want them to think is not the same thing as trying to find out what they really do think. I am more interested in the latter – so last week I asked what people in Scotland really do think about Trident.

Told that the Trident system is coming to the end of its useful life and will soon have to be scrapped or replaced, only one third of Scots said the UK should give up nuclear weapons completely. More than half thought Trident should be replaced, either with an equally powerful system (20 per cent) or a cheaper but less powerful system (31 per cent). Asking a separate sample the same question but adding that the cost of replacing Trident would be £20 to £25 billion made no significant difference).

Scots were slightly more likely to think Britain’s nuclear weapons should continue to be based in Scotland (43 per cent) than that they should not (39 per cent), though opinion differed sharply between pro- and anti-independence respondents. In the event of Scotland becoming independent, only half of Scots thought Britain’s nuclear weapons should cease to be based at Faslane; 35 per cent would be happy to see the UK lease the naval base, with 15 per cent undecided. Again, those in favour of independence opposed the idea by more than two to one.

Overall, only a quarter of Scots thought Britain did not need nuclear weapons during the Cold War and does not need them today. More than a fifth said the need is lower than during the Cold War, while for nearly two fifths Britain needs nuclear weapons just as much as before (29 per cent) or even more (10 per cent): hardly a picture of overwhelming opposition.

It’s a pity CND had no room for such questions on its survey. As ever, I am happy to help.

First, there is nothing remarkable about a governing party losing ground (though there is also no guarantee that it will be regained in time). The overall result, if not the precise losses, could have been predicted the day after the 2010 election. There is plenty of bad news but it is worth noting that holding onto Staffordshire, one of four counties we gained from Labour at the height of Gordon Brown’s unpopularity four years ago, was a real achievement.

Second, there is only so much these elections – or any elections that are not general elections – can tell us about what will happen when people come to choose a Westminster government and a Prime Minister. The YouGov poll completed on Wednesday found people expressing different voting intentions when asked about the local and general elections; the biggest difference between the two contests was in the share recorded for the Conservatives. The same was true in Eastleigh, where my poll on by-election day found large numbers of people saying they would vote differently, or consider doing so, at the next general election. Since councils set taxes and provide real services that people use, local elections do not matter as little to people as do some others, notably elections to the European Parliament (the next of which nearly everyone now expects UKIP to win). Even so, for many people they still present a chance to register their unhappiness with the way things are going – an opportunity which many have taken.

Third, to the extent that local elections give an indication of direction and momentum, they must be at least as troubling for Ed Miliband as they are for David Cameron. Of the four counties Labour lost to the Conservatives in 2009, they won back only two – Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire (and the latter by the smallest possible margin). The failure to regain Lancashire is a real setback for the party. They have only six of the 59 seats on the county council in Kent (albeit three times as many as they had on Wednesday), where they will be hoping to gain MPs in two years.

The projected national equivalent vote share for these elections – Labour 29%, Conservative 25%, UKIP 23%, Lib Dems 14% – is pretty mortifying for all three established parties. But as well as the 2009 elections, the last time these counties were contested, it is worth looking at 2008 when we were, as today, two years from a general election. On that day the Tories won a projected national vote share of 43%, trouncing Labour by 19 points. Even that did not translate into a convincing victory in 2010. These results show the softness of Labour’s national poll lead.

But there is no getting away from the UKIP result. Nigel Farage has captured a mood, and he has done so adeptly and with panache. Theories will abound as to how the Tories should respond. As I know from my own research – and surely this is confirmed by the size of their vote in elections to authorities that set the council tax and light the streets – UKIP support is only tangentially related to the question of EU membership. Though immigration is a bigger concern, UKIP’s appeal is only partly to do with policy at all. The party’s voters are not clowns or fruitcakes, but neither are they voting for a manifesto.

Nobody believes UKIP is a party of government. In elections like these, that matters not at all. Indeed for those wishing to show their discontent with politics, and with the general state of things, it is a positive advantage (and one that used to work for the Liberal Democrats). By the same token, in a general election the same factor ought to work against them.

Whether it will or not is up to us. In 2015 we will not be competing with UKIP for votes among those who are trying to choose the best government for Britain. Among those attracted to UKIP, a Conservative government is a more popular outcome than any of the alternatives. Our task is to convince them – as well as the former Labour and Lib Dem voters we also need for a majority – that whether or not they get one actually matters.

The poll also found people all but evenly divided over whether, at the next election, the Conservatives “should be given the chance by voters of finishing the job of restoring Britain’s economic prospects” (44%) or not (46%). The wording of the question is quite friendly to the Tories, with the implied acceptance that the job of restoring economic prospects is underway, but even so: if this constitutes a boost for Labour, the narrowing polls must have made Ed Miliband’s party even gloomier than we thought.

In midterm, with the economy as it is, for only a bare majority to say it will soon be time for a change of government hardly suggests the Opposition is about to take the country by storm. Three months before the 2010 election, the proportion of voters saying it was time for change reached 82 per cent. As I concluded in Minority Verdict, the explanation for the election result lay in the chasm between this figure and the 37 per cent who ultimately voted Conservative.

One of the most important tasks for an Opposition is to show that the change people want and the change it is offering are the same thing. In today’s cynical age, and given the continued erosion of two-party dominance, this is hard enough even when the desire for change is overwhelming. If people are no more than lukewarm about even the need for change, the job is even tougher.

These figures only offer so much comfort to the Conservatives. Skewed constituency boundaries mean Labour need a much lower share of the vote to win than we do. The bulk of the coalition’s cuts are still to come. And a single bad radio interview for Miliband only matters so much in the great scheme of things.

A Conservative majority looks a long way off. But if I were Ed, I would expect to be doing rather better by now. He is not regarded as a more credible candidate for Prime Minister, and his party continues to trail on the economy, the dominant issue of the day. We have a coalition government, and there is little clamour for change. The logic may depressing, but it’s inescapable.

As you know I have taken quite an interest in UKIP’s fortunes, and what they portend for the Conservatives. I have followed your career with interest, and I must confess I always enjoy your contributions. I particularly liked your joke that you worked hard in the City of London for twenty years, at least until lunch time.

But there is one thing I wonder about. What exactly are you up to?

You say quite rightly that UKIP has drawn supporters from all parties, and those people would not necessarily revert to their old voting habits if UKIP ceased to exist. Even so, you would probably accept that the Conservatives would suffer most from a strong UKIP performance at the general election. Yet a Tory government is the only hope you have of getting the referendum that could make your dreams come true. The better you do, the less likely you are to get what you want.

So what is your real agenda?

Let me tell you my theory. Your declared aim of ushering Britain out of the EU has come up against your promise that UKIP is “here to stay”. If secession were the priority, you would get behind the only party with a chance of forming a government that had, whatever else you may dislike about it, offered the referendum that makes it possible. That would mean assigning a degree of credibility and good faith to the Tories, and acknowledging that one party had a policy that was manifestly different from that of the other two. Being “here to stay”, though, depends on promoting cynicism about the main parties, and on insisting that they are all the same. (I think you call them all “social democrats”). You had to choose, and you decided that becoming a permanent presence in British politics was more important than helping bring about the referendum.

Am I close? If so I can’t say I blame you. After all, a Conservative victory followed by the referendum result you want could see UKIP vanish in a puff of logic, and in as little as four years. What would you do for an encore?

I can see that the path you have chosen offers rather better job security. But what is the purpose of this new permanent presence? You are astute enough to know that UKIP is a protest party for its voters, even if it isn’t for you. Disheartening though it must be, you know that it is not principle that fuels your bandwagon. My final by-election poll in Eastleigh found more than four in five of your voters there were protesting about something.

That’s not to say you don’t talk about issues. It is sometimes observed that UKIP has broadened its outlook beyond the European question, and there is some truth in that: UKIP has gone from being an anti-EU movement to being a broader-based none-of-the-above party. The most successful none-of-the-above party of the day, certainly, but a none-of-the-above party nonetheless. (In that sense, without wishing to upset you unduly, you have become the Heir to Clegg.)

One of your favourite riffs is that you are prepared to raise things that the other parties brush under the carpet. But in your own way, you do the same. You know the world can’t be changed back to the way many of your supporters would like it to be. But rather than say so, you pretend that our problems could be solved – and we could increase defence spending, cut tax and balance the budget all at once – if only we did a handful of apparently simple things, like leave the EU and clamp down on immigration. (Making unkeepable promises in the expectation of never having to keep them is another qualification in the Heir to Clegg stakes). As it happens, your supporters know the world is more complicated than that; a vote for UKIP is a vote against the complication.

It seems to be working for the time being. But to keep your momentum up, you must continue to cultivate disaffection, disillusionment, anxiety, distrust and grumpiness – and no longer for a cause, but as an end in itself. I can’t believe that’s what you went into politics to do. And as I say, it must be demoralising for someone of your talent. So why on earth do you do it?

Maybe you could explain it to me over a pint.

Kind regards

Michael

This article was first published in the Mail on Sunday

There is a ritual, and even a specialised vocabulary, for midterm local elections in the UK. In advance, they are always a “crucial test” of the government’s popularity, and the opposition’s ability to turn poll ratings into votes. Next comes expectation management, when incumbent parties brief that they will lose practically all their councillors, and the challengers claim they expect to gain hardly any, in the forlorn hope of bamboozling political reporters.

Then comes the count, always a “grim night” for the governing party on which it loses “swaths” of seats in “former strongholds”, despite claims that its vote is “holding up well” in much of the country – though clearly less so in places that are “difficult territory for us”. Finally comes the “aftermath”, in which the losing party claims to have listened and “learnt lessons”, while privately holding an “inquest” into its “disastrous performance”.

Nowhere does this matter more than in the marginal seats, as demonstrated in the February by-election in Eastleigh, where the Liberal Democrats’ dominance of the borough helped deliver victory for Mike Thornton, a local councillor.

According to my recent survey of 19,000 voters in 213 marginals, Lib Dem support is heavily localised. National polls put the party on less than half the 24 per cent it achieved at the 2010 general election. But in seats the Lib Dems are defending against the Tories, the party’s share of the vote almost doubles when people are asked to think about their own constituency and candidates, rather than simply how they would vote in an election tomorrow.

Again, local activity is the key: incumbent Lib Dems outpolled MPs from other parties on all measures, especially being “a local person with roots in the area”, “friendly and approachable”, and “keeping in touch through newsletters and leaflets”. Even so, my poll suggests that the erosion in Lib Dem support could help David Cameron take 17 seats from his coalition partners in England and Wales.

The news is rather less heartening for the Conservatives where Labour are their main rivals. Ed Miliband’s party is ahead in all of the clusters of seats in which it will challenge sitting Tories at a general election, with the biggest swings in the Thames estuary, the Midlands and parts of the north. Labour are making slightly less headway in the southern towns and suburbs where the party has traditionally struggled, except under Tony Blair.

My poll found that Labour would gain a total of 109 seats, including 93 from the Tories, giving Mr Miliband 367 seats in the House of Commons – a majority of 84. Ministers including Chloe Smith, MP for Norwich North, Anna Soubry in Broxtowe, Edward Timpson in Crewe & Nantwich, and Esther McVey in Wirral West would be vulnerable, as would serial rebel Stewart Jackson in Peterborough and Margot James, MP for Stourbridge, who was appointed earlier this week to the Number 10 policy unit.

There are two important points to make about this. First, this is a snapshot not a prediction. A great deal can change in two years, and the polls are likely to narrow as the choice of who should run the country becomes more immediate.

Second, at the time of my research the national polls were suggesting a Labour majority of about 114. In other words, Labour seems to be doing rather less well in the marginal seats than in the country as a whole. This may seem small comfort to the Tories but it matters; parties expecting a big victory, like Labour in 1997, tend to do better in their target seats than they do nationally.

Although the 2010 result was disappointing for the Conservatives, the party’s targeting strategy was a success. The plan – for which I, then a deputy chairman of the party, was responsible – helped us to win 23 more Labour seats and nine more Lib Dem seats than we would have done on a uniform swing. Indeed, had it not been for our stronger performance in the marginal seats, Labour would have been the largest party and would have been able to continue in government.

No doubt to their delight, voters in marginal constituencies receive a great deal more attention from political parties than anyone else. While most seats are all but unwinnable or unlosable, it is rational that parties should concentrate on the relatively few that are closely fought.

This does not, or should not, mean that other voters should be ignored. Targeting can help maximise the number of seats a party wins with any given level of national support, but it is no substitute for broad appeal. It is 21 years this month since the last time the Conservative party managed to amass the popular support needed to win an election outright.

In 2010, the party had not done enough to show that the change uncertain voters wanted was the change we were offering. Even now, 16 years after they dismissed us from office, many people who would once have been natural supporters still do not think the party is on their side. Mr Cameron faces the unenviable task of showing, at a time of austerity, that his party is not just for those who have already achieved material success, while holding on to Tory loyalists and luring back those threatening to defect to Ukip.

The news is not all bad for Conservatives. The traditional fear of Labour once neutralised by Tony Blair – that the party would once again spend more than the country can afford – has returned. This will help Mr Cameron, but it will not be enough. For the next two years everything the Tories do must show they have the right priorities, display strong leadership, prove they are on the side of the right people, and offer continual reassurance about their motives. It’s a tall order. And time is not on our side.

In a poll of 1,035 minority voters completed earlier this week I found that nearly nine in ten think Britain has become a multicultural country, and a similar proportion saying this is a good thing. In a nationally representative poll conducted at the same time, 90% also said Britain was multicultural, but only 70% were in favour of this development. There was considerable variation between different kinds of people but in only one group – UKIP voters – did a majority (57%) say they were opposed to multiculturalism.

Three quarters of ethnic minority voters said that having people from a wide variety of backgrounds had strengthened British culture, though only just over half of the general population agreed. Just over half (54%) of the national sample thought immigration had been a bad thing for the country on the whole. 80% of black voters disagreed, but only 64% of those from an Asian background; only 51% of Sikhs thought immigration had generally been good for Britain.

Strikingly, most minority voters thought “the different ethnic groups that make up this country get on well”, while a majority of the general population thought “there is an increasing amount of tension” between them. Again, UKIP voters were the most likely to think this; indeed black and Asian people were twice as likely as UKIP voters to think relations between different ethnic groups were good.

Nearly nine in ten ethnic minority voters thought Labour supported Britain being a multicultural country, with little variation between groups. However, while only 38% of black Caribbean participants thought the Conservatives favoured multiculturalism (though 44% thought this of David Cameron), nearly two thirds of Hindus thought so (and three quarters thought it true of the PM).

Only just over half (54%) of voters as a whole thought the Conservative Party favoured multiculturalism. Tellingly, UKIP voters were much more likely than average to think this was true of the Tories (73%).

Most participants in the ethnic minority poll could not name spontaneously a single politician from their own or another minority background. Keith Vaz was mentioned most commonly (by 10% of participants), followed by Sayeeda Warsi, Diane Abbott and, perhaps oddly, Ed Miliband. George Galloway, of all people, was fifth.

The memory of Enoch Powell remained strongest among black Caribbean participants, 64% of whom said they had “heard of him and know who he is or what he said”. Meanwhile, more than half of those from an Asian background said they had never heard of him; only 28% knew who he was. Among the wider population, nearly three quarters had heard of Powell and 58% knew who he was or what he said. 90% of UKIP voters fall into the latter category.

Nearly three quarters of Hindus, 70% of Sikhs and 68% of Muslims agreed that “if you work hard, it is possible to be very successful in Britain no matter what your background”. Only 59% of the general population thought this. Those from a black Caribbean background were the most likely to disagree: half thought it more true that “in Britain today, people from some backgrounds will never have a real chance to be successful no matter how hard they work”. This group was also the least likely to think their children’s lives would be better than theirs – only 51% thought this, compared to 67% of those from a black African background and six in ten Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.

The economy and jobs were overwhelmingly the most important issue for ethnic minority participants. More than half mentioned the issue spontaneously, with immigration second, raised by 6%. Only 22% of black voters, and 38% of those from an Asian background, said they most trusted David Cameron and George Osborne to manage the economy (though 51% of Hindus did so – more than among the population as a whole).

More generally, and not surprisingly, Labour was by far the best regarded party among ethnic minorities. Again, though, there was considerable variation in attitudes to the Conservatives. While the party did uniformly badly among black and Muslim voters, Hindus and Sikhs often had a rather more positive view of the Tories than did voters as a whole.

Nevertheless, it remains a fact that only 16% of ethnic minority voters supported the Conservatives at the last election. As I argued in Degrees of Separation, we must do better than this – both because we should be a party for the whole country, and because we will find it increasingly difficult to win a majority without them. There is no doubt that in 2010 this situation cost us seats.

The Conservatives are starting to take this issue seriously, with the energetic Alok Sharma in charge as Vice Chairman for BME Communities. This is welcome, but in my experience the party has often proved unable or unwilling to sustain long term projects. The urgent always ends up crowding out the important. It will take more than one parliament to get this right, but we must.

It is evidently the season for offering you well-intentioned advice. Since I spend rather a lot of time finding out how the voters see things, I thought you might appreciate a view from the other side of the fence.

Most of the advice you have been getting is pretty good. David Blunkett is right that Labour must do more than articulate grievance. John Reid is right about the need to move beyond protest towards offering solutions. Tom Harris is right about the importance of showing you are the Labour Party, not the Benefits Party. Peter Mandelson is right that Labour should not try to duck the major structural challenges and choices facing Britain. Alan Milburn is right that people will soon want to know what Labour is for, not just what it is against. And above all, Tony Blair is right that Labour must move out of its “comfort zone” and offer leadership if it is to win.

Even before these helpful Blairite interventions, you must have known that much of the Labour share in current polls is partly default opposition a mid-term government with hard decisions to make and no money to spend. Your reported pursuit of a “35 per cent strategy” sounds unambitious, but shows you understand how soft Labour’s support really is.

As I found in Project Red Alert, my research on Labour’s prospects at the end of last year, a third of those who would consider voting Labour say the party hasn’t yet learned the right lessons from what went wrong during its time in government, and cannot yet be trusted to run the country again. Most of those who have switched to Labour say the party has learned its lessons, but they are at a loss to say what makes them think this. Often they simply want to believe it, which will be fine until they notice the evidence to the contrary.

People’s biggest general worry about Labour is that the party has not made clear what it would do to improve things. All most people think they have heard from you is that you are against whatever it is that the government is doing. This is understandable in the first half of a parliament, but with only 25 months to the general election that position will soon become unsustainable. It is also rather surprising, given your ambition to move the centre ground of politics. It is debatable enough whether politicians can ever move the centre ground; what is certainly true is that you can’t expect voters to move towards you if they can’t tell where you are.

More specifically, undecided voters fear that Labour would spend and borrow more than the country can afford. However much people may dislike austerity, they understand that you can’t spend what you haven’t got; by opposing every cut Labour seems to be turning away from reality. This blanket oppositionism also works against you in the welfare debate. “The problem of some people living on benefits when they are able to work” (along with “Britain’s overall level of debt”) is one of the few things that many people think would be worse today had Labour won in 2010.

I understand why you have got yourself into this position: some of your new supporters hope you will restore what they have lost in the cuts, and you are reluctant to disabuse them of the notion. But others wonder whether Labour can yet be trusted with the public finances. In other words, some potential Labour voters hope you will greatly increase public spending, and others fear that you will. Sooner or later, and probably sooner than you think, you are going to have decide who is to be disappointed.

Labour’s wholesale opposition to cuts would be slightly less incredible if you did not simultaneously complain that the deficit is falling too slowly. As it is, you seem to argue that we could borrow less if only we borrowed more. After nearly fifty years in business I know a tough sell when I see one.

One final point: what are you going to do about Ed Balls? Since he was part of the Brownite team who were in charge when it all went wrong – to put it as neutrally as possible – it is hard for you to claim Labour have learned the right lessons and moved on while he remains Shadow Chancellor (a difficult point for you to make, obviously). The other problem is that for as long as he is in place you will be stuck with the policy that unaffordable spending should continue.

Have you thought about moving him sideways to shadow Vince Cable at Business? This would keep him in the front line where his obvious political skills would remain at your disposal. It would also play to his biggest strength, that of winding up his opponents. Politically, Cable has more in common with Balls than he does with his Conservative colleagues. The continual refrain from Ed that “I agree with Vince” would drive Tory backbenchers nuts.

Just a suggestion. Why don’t we discuss over lunch?

Some will recall 9 April 1992 more clearly than most – not least the man who then headed the Conservative Research Department’s Political Section. Can that 25 year-old aide to John Major have imagined that despite its fourth consecutive victory and 14 million votes (a total which remains a record), his party’s standing with the public would be reversed within a year – and that the next Conservative Prime Minister to enter Number 10 would be him?

It falls to David Cameron to emulate Major in leading the Tories to an unexpected victory. Two decades of shifting demographics and social attitudes challenge British Conservatives just as they do the Republicans in the United States. But it is  worth reflecting on what the past can tell us – and I think Cameron can draw inspiration from the 1992 campaign he helped to create.

John Major had a number of advantages. One was that after only 16 months in office, people were willing to give him the chance to show what he could do (the same chance they would have given Gordon Brown in 2007). Another advantage was Neil Kinnock. Cameron can take no comfort from the first, but nor should he from the second: while many potential Labour voters find Ed Miliband unconvincing, they do not see him as a liability.

A further advantage, more applicable to today, was public concern about the economy. Ipsos MORI’s polling archive reveals that, in election years since 1979, when an economic issue has dominated the agenda the Conservatives have won – or Labour have lost. Inflation was the public’s biggest concern in 1979, unemployment in 1983, 1987 and 1992, and the economy in general in 2010. In 1997, 2001 and 2005, the most important issue for voters was the NHS. The economy remains top of the list today, and looks likely to stay there until the next election and beyond.

History also shows that prospects for a governing party are unconnected to economic optimism. Voters were slightly more likely to be optimistic than pessimistic on the eve of the 1992 election; but in 1997, they were optimistic by a much bigger margin, for all the good it did Mr Major. Similarly, net pessimism about the economy did Tony Blair no harm in 2005. Elections are a choice not a referendum; whatever the situation, voters will decide who can handle it best (or least badly).

But there was more to Major’s victory than the benefit of the doubt and a dream opponent. In the two years before the election, the Tory campaign built consistently on the theme of “opportunity for all”, both in tone and content. The rhetoric was matched by a coherent plan, which included the expansion of higher education, and the commitment to choice and accountability in public services. Tory motives were trusted to the extent that Labour failed to make a number of campaign lies stick (while five years later, their baseless claim that the Conservatives would privatise the state pension system quickly gained currency). Though mocked in some quarters, the talk of a classless society signalled a commitment to social mobility, the idea that we wanted to include rather than exclude, that we were for everyone.

These things were more important than the negative campaign against Labour which, admittedly, was relentless. Many feared that a Labour government would raise taxes, and that certainly helped. But they didn’t think this because we told them to, even if “Labour’s double whammy” entered the language for a time (and how many could name the second whammy?) Labour had promised to spend more, and voters did not believe its assurance that the inevitable tax rises would be confined to the better off.

Recalling the 1992 election is a melancholy exercise for Conservatives because we know how the story ends. Within months the government was engulfed by a series of fiascos which dragged on for four and a half years until the electorate put us out of our misery.

When Cameron entered parliament in 2001 the party had hardly come to terms with its trouncing. It still hadn’t done so by 2005 when, drawing on Smell The Coffee, my analysis of the Conservative predicament, he became the first leader to grasp the scale of the transformation needed. But by the 2010 election the Tories had not done enough to show that the change people wanted from Gordon Brown’s Labour government was the same as the change they were offering. In 2013, though it leads on managing the economy and taking tough decisions for the long term, the Conservative Party has a way to go to win back the reputation as a party for those who want to do well – or just continue to get by – as well as those who have already succeeded.

Ultimately, the lesson of 1992 is that a party of competence and decency, that can show it wants to improve opportunity for everyone, is a powerful force. So powerful, in fact, that it wins every time. Will 23 years be enough time to become that party again, or will we have to wait 28 years with yet another leader to have the chance again? The bookmakers have their view. Let us hope they are wrong.