If Labour is to beat Cameron, Brown must forge a new tax contract with the voters

Is David Cameron feeling his way to a winning political narrative? In a number of recent speeches he has begun to spell out a new debate about the size of the state. It is definitively post-Thatcherite. The battle lines are not the traditional ones of cutting public provision and leaving the private sector to fill the gaps. Cameron is instead seeking ways of offering collective provision which is not run and dominated by a central state.

The public appears cautiously interested. But, given the weakness of those bodies that once provided collective provision, say in welfare — poleaxed by good old Mr Attlee — provision of collective services by voluntary bodies sounds good, but is unlikely to provide any major innovations that voters would notice.

At this point, step forward Gordon Brown. He is arraigned for dithering, also for being an unreconstructed Stalinist and, perhaps worst of all, bereft of new ideas.