Marcus Wood

The biggest criticism of David Cameron so far is the chorus of voices saying ‘yeah, nice guy, but what where’s the meat, what are the policies?”

This is a fascinating change which has gone largely unnoticed.

For years we have been belting out policy after policy and no-one has been interested; two thirds of the electorate cared not one jot what our policies were - they weren’t going to vote Conservative whatever we said.

The contrast, as an activist, between years of trying to make people take an interest in our policies and today being criticised for not giving them enough detail is truly astonishing.

Now, all of a sudden, it matters what the Conservatives are going to stand for; what our policies are going to be because people desperately want a viable alternative to New Labour.

They may -in the end- still not decide to choose us, that much is self evident from the polls. But what is very different to any other time that I have been involved in politics is that a majority of the public care who we are and what we would do; and are clamouring for more detail (which I am glad we are not going to be rushed into revealing before we are ready).

There is a very important warning there for both Labour and the Lib Dems and fortunately (for us) neither of them show any signs at all that they have seen it.