The Tories cannot continue to fight the election on the vague promise of ‘change’

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics

Even the Tories accept that they can’t go like this. For a while, David Cameron thought he could maintain his safety-first strategy and leave Labour to tear itself apart. But with the polls returning to hung parliament territory, the high command now accepts that there is a need for a course correction. This is welcome news. Recognising there is a problem is the first step to recovery.

The problem is that the Tories are barely hitting 40 per cent in the polls despite the fact that they are running against a tired and discredited government led by a man whom most of the Cabinet, let alone the public, can’t abide. The root cause of this problem is that they have no central message. The party’s posters all bear the tagline ‘year for change’. But beyond this, the Tories struggle to explain what change they will bring apart from not being Gordon Brown.