Black-sky thinking

A few months ago, before the bizarre political drama of the autumn, doubting Mr Cameron8217;s talent would have seemed odd. Mr Cameron faced a prime minister so reviled that his own Labour Party was plotting to unseat him. Then Mr Brown8217;s incantations about ending 8220;boom and bust8221; were violently debunked: banks were nationalised, the housing market crashed, the chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, unveiled petrifying debt projections and thousands of people lost their jobs.

Mr Cameron8217;s three predecessors as Tory leader could scarcely dream of such a slam-dunk opportunity, or of the pliable support within the party that he enjoys. In America, similar circumstances predictably led to punishment of the incumbent Republicans. Yet in Britain the Tories8217; advantage in the opinion polls has been eroded, almost to nothing. Mr Brown and Mr Darling handsomely lead Mr Cameron and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, on the salient issue of economic competence.

Wow8212;and how? Mr Brown8217;s own political skill, dormant for much of his premiership, is a big part of the story. With epic chutzpah, he has eschewed all responsibility for the recession. He brought Peter Mandelson back into government, a manoeuvre that neutered his internal rivals and intimidated his external ones. And he saw the chance for redemption that the financial crisis offered8212;a strategic opportunity for welcome state activism that only a party of the left could seize even if, in Labour8217;s case, doing so involved junking many of its economic shibboleths.

But another part of the explanation has been Mr Cameron8217;s own awkward response to the crisis. In the initial banking havoc, he was patriotically supportive of Mr Brown. Then, nauseated by the prime minister8217;s grandstanding, he switched to virulent aggression, yelping that the crisis was even worse than Labour admitted. The Tories opposed the government8217;s VAT reduction and broader fiscal stimulus; desperate to insert himself into the news, Mr Cameron has made some counter-proposals of his own, calling for a loan-guarantee scheme for businesses and, this week, for a 8220;day of reckoning8221; for nefarious financiers.

Some of these ideas8212;the business-loan scheme, for instance8212;are good. But the Tories8217; problem is not specific policies or a lack of them: it is not actual policies that have boosted Mr Brown. His bounce, and Mr Cameron8217;s slide, are a function of mood.

Look at Mr Cameron8217;s current image. Labour8217;s caricature of his astringent economic approach as 8220;do nothing8221; is unfair but evocative; it has awakened an almost olfactory memory of Tory responses to past downturns. Meanwhile, Mr Cameron pursues his theme of the 8220;broken society8221;, his catch-all, exaggerated label for a range of ills such as drug abuse and chaotic families. The 8220;broken society8221; slogan was invented in a recent but distant era when, so Mr Cameron breezily argued, the economy was essentially sound. Combined with his glumly parsimonious economic message, this social pessimism now makes him seem unappealingly bitter and recriminatory. He has begun to resemble those much-derided, Tebbitean predecessors, only with better hair.

This is almost the opposite pitch to the one that made Mr Cameron popular. A year ago he was peddling 8220;hope8221; and 8220;aspiration8221;; now those alluring abstract nouns have been replaced by 8220;efficiency8221;, 8220;reductions8221; and, lurking behind those, 8220;cuts8221;. Where once his message was cunningly multi-valanced8212;Mr Cameron had a knack for discussing subjects such as immigration in a way that seemed liberal and conservative at the same time8212;now it is depressingly bald. Blue-sky thinking has been replaced by black-sky thinking. Once it was Mr Brown who, with his puritanical strictures on casinos, drugs and booze, was the Malvolio-esque killjoy of British politics. Now Mr Brown is studiously upbeat, and Mr Cameron is the chief doom-monger.

That is not to say that he should revert to the exotic photo opportunities and cuddly rebranding of yore, blithely overlooking the mounting job losses. To prosper, however, he needs to revive the optimism that used to characterise his rhetoric, updating it for the post-credit-crunch era. He needs new tactics8212;a superior plan to revive manufacturing, say8212;but also the old, neglected strategy: to promise eventually and with caveats a better, happier Britain. Even in a slump, he needs to start smiling again.

Grace under pressure

In truth, Bagehot8217;s question about Mr Cameron8217;s leadership was somewhat facetious. After all, in 2008 the Tories won famous victories in London and Crewe, and are still narrowly ahead in the opinion polls though they are well short of the numbers they need to win a majority in the House of Commons at a general election. When the election comes8212;and for all the chatter about an early vote, the Tories are unlikely to need the manifesto they are somewhat despondently preparing in the next few months8212;Mr Cameron may be a decisive asset. He is calm under pressure no tantrum, Cameron and an impressive campaigner.

But he will flop in 2009 unless he wrenches himself out of the downbeat posture into which events and Mr Brown have driven him. Unlike Malvolio, his smile genuinely becomes him8212;and for Mr Cameron, smiling really is the way to achieve greatness.

copy; The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008