Brown claims the centre ground

It would be highly amusing if it wasn't so conceited. Brown's pledge to be positioning Labour as the party of the middle class - coupled with the vacuous slogan "posterity not austerity" - is setting the dividing lines for a campaign fought as some sort of perverse 'good versus evil' clash. The idea emanating from the Labour camp seems to be to present the Tories as the party of cuts.

Great, except that there is a fundamental paradox in attacking your opponent for something which you yourself will in no way be able to avoid.

It all paints a fairly grim and predictable picture of the months to come; the real issues will be avoided as the election is fought along misleading and unedifying lines. The Tories' real counter to Brown's claim that Labour will be the party of radical change in the coming decade is the superb education policy, the brainchild of the Shadow Education Minister Michael Gove. Yet in Cameron's seemingly ill-fated "policy-a-day" initiative, we have seen no mention of it thus far. That isn't good enough. Brown says Labour will not jump to the Left to counteract the Tories, so why doesn't the Conservative Party push them? In presenting such progressive and radical policy as the Swedish schools model, the Tories will force Labour to respond with equally valuable and eye-catching policies. It will then be for the British public to winnow the failing policies from those which have been devised in a reactionary manner, and do this they will.

The initiative has to lie with the Conservatives; the talent is there but the ambition is lacking. People are bored of cuts masquerading as not being so. If a reprioritisation of spending is on the cards, then let's hear what that entails. Vision will be electorally rewarded in times of stagnation, just as it was in 1979 and, indeed, in 1997. Tax breaks for married couples is key, but it is not substantive stuff. People's concerns seem at times to be thrown by the wayside. Even when the Conservatives come out in defence of issues that people feel genuine concern over, their comments (such as Cameron's pledge for immigration policy on the Andrew Marr Show)simply fall under the radar. The assumption must be that these policies need to be adequately voiced in order to reach the median voter base; announcing such a policy at 9am on a politics-centric show is not going to effectively reach floating or apathetic voters.

So let's hear more from Gove, more from Fox and certainly more from Lansley, whose department's limp vision for the next parliament is precisely the sort of drivel which will alienate new voters, annoy core voters and allow Labour to make inroads into the middle class vote. It sounds infeasible at this stage that Labour could do so, but the Opposition's job is to represent a viable alternative at election time, not to appear equally ineffective. When presented with two dire options, it is surprising how many people adopt the mantra 'better the devil you know...'