The election sprint has turned into a marathon. Can Dave keep the lead?

For a man whose economic policies had once again been stolen by the government, George Osborne looked unusually cheery as he delivered the opposition response to the pre-Budget report on Tuesday. Alistair Darling had brazenly claimed as his own the Tories’ new ideas: raising the inheritance tax threshold, an airline levy and taxing foreign financiers. But to the shadow chancellor, this theft represented victory. ‘From this day on,’ he declared, ‘let there be no doubt who is winning the battle of ideas.’

It was a fair point. Mr Darling had spent the first half of his speech denouncing Conservative policy and the second half aping it. Conspicuous by its absence was the mysterious ‘vision for change’ which Gordon Brown had promised as he cancelled the election last weekend. The only vision was of deteriorating public finances, and the largest deficit in western Europe. The spending review had been the Prime Minister’s best chance to recover from the disaster of last weekend.