Eerier things have happened, I’ve no doubt, but my Saturday Ramble column written yesterday and titled, What if Labour were to win? is eerie enough for a Sunday morning.

We awoke to a dark, rainy dawn, right in the middle of the Conservative’s Spring Conference in Brighton, and to a Sunday Times headline: Brown on course to win election. A You Gov poll puts the Tories just two points ahead, not enough to overtake Labour.

Of course, that number presumes an even swing across the country, which won’t materialize. Oddly, the poll result was altered between the first and second editions. The change clipped three points off the Tory lead, according to Greg Dyke on the Marr show.

It’s certainly not as bad as that. However, I don’t resile from the scenario that a very low turnout could work against them, even though that upsets the conventional wisdom.

Syntagma will be watching David Cameron’s keynote speech today with hawk eyes and bats’ ears for some attempt to plug this hole in his strategy. (See Election Notebook tomorrow).

The depressing new slogan, “Vote for change” is relying too much on Brown’s unpopularity. Those of us who follow politics are aware of the technical detail of the policy agenda, but most voters aren’t. They need a good solid reason to go out and vote. Here’s a list of possibilities:

1. Announce a post-election enquiry into Labour’s cynical and destructive immigration policy, which has many people I know seething with anger. The announcement will be enough, and would mean the party will not need to elaborate on immigration during the campaign. It would, though, whack the ball into Labour’s court, something that shamefully hasn’t happened yet.
2. Cancel the TV debates, they will bore the electorate and give voters a reason to stay at home.
3. Offer some broad, sweeping incentives to vote. A promise of a trade-only agreement with Europe would galvanize the core vote and suck in Ukip supporters, as well as some in the BNP.

I believe that would win a comfortable majority for the blues.

Some Conservative bloggers frequently complain that the Daily Telegraph is not a Cameroon paper, nor even a Tory one for that matter.

Strangely, I find a strong congruity of purpose between my own views and many of the writers on the paper. Although I agree with Iain Dale that Simon Heffer’s evisceration of George Osborne yesterday was way over the top of the previous top, Janet Daley and Charles Moore both got to the heart of what is a widely perceived problem: David Cameron has not hooked the Tory core vote.

As I pointed out yesterday in Saturday Ramble, it could cost them dear. A supporting, but intelligently critical, newspaper should be listened to, not rubbished.

I hear that Dave is going to talk about his “patriotic duty” today at the spring conference. I do hope he gives hard examples that will resonate with the faithful. If it’s all window decoration, it will not heal the gap.

Annoyment of the Week
A Gordon Brown Free Zone

We don’t want “change” per se, we want improvement.

Is this Dave going all Obama on us? Times change, but change remains an empty slogan.

I can’t get worked up about Ukip’s Nigel Farage’s attack on Herman Rumpy Dumpy’s appearance and personality in the so-called European parliament.

For one thing, I don’t regard jibes at what someone can’t help as fair game. While I despise what the man stands for: increased European integration, his personal characteristics are the sphere of shock-jock comedians, not politicians or decent people.

Or is Farage more alternative comedian than politician?

Equality Bill hardliners are probably delighted that it will put pressure on schools not to insist on girls wearing skirts. The reason? It may offend trans-sexuals.

I’ve strained my mind to its limit but I can’t make tail nor tail of it.

If we are to follow this to its logical conclusion, what about Transylvanian vampires? Won’t they feel let down by laws against biting people?

With the massive intake of migrants from Eastern Europe under Labour, there must be at least a couple of dozen now in the country.

I don’t expect the bruvvers to bother too much about them, though, as they seem to be mainly Counts and so inevitably Tory voters.

Let’s hear it for the bloodsuckers, especially as there are few jobs in the City for them now.

Boris Johnson, or BoJo in common parlance, is conspicuously AWOL from the Conservative election battle so far.

Remember his effort at the Party Conference in Manchester? A couple of corkers like that would go down a treat during what promises to be an arid and humourless campaign. Labour has no one to match him.

When the Duke of Wellington surveyed his men before the Battle of Waterloo, he remarked, “I don’t know about the French, but they scare the wits out of me.”

He might say the same about Boris.

John Evans

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David Cameron’s long-hinted-at Shadow Cabinet reshuffle is taking its time.

We have to wait, it seems, for Caroline Spelman’s naughty girl investigation by a Parliamentary watchdog. On any scale of comparison with Labour’s and some individual MP’s indiscretions, Spelman’s is marginal.

The verdict could come this week, or may take longer. If it doesn’t happen now, Cameron should go ahead without her. She has hardly distinguished herself in the spotlight as Party Chairman, although with Theresa Villiers said to be on the way out, losing two women at the top may not be a good idea.

So, what should Dave do? Who should he favour to add meat and muscle to his strangely monochrome front bench?

One thing’s for sure, the team chosen now will lead the Conservatives into the next election. They must be experienced battlers and on top of their game. Brown has already accused the leadership of a lack of experience. Cameron should counter that charge from the outset.

The following suggestions are my own and are not predictions. I doubt my mind and Dave’s are so finely synchronized.

First chapter: The Return of the Big Beasts
Ken Clarke’s fate will inevitably dominate the news agenda. His age, 68, has not diminished his abilities, nor his capacity for mischief.

The idea, craftily spread by Peter Mandleson, that he should be his oppo on the Business ticket, is self-serving. Mandleson is not in the Commons, so Clarke will be up against a nonentity. It will blunt his skill as a Parliamentary performer.

I would place John Redwood in this portfolio. He’s been there before, and he’s the Tories most able operator in the field.

Clarke should go where he can do most damage, the Home Office. As a former Home Secretary, opposing the appalling Jacqui Smith will be a turkey shoot for him. It will raise the troops’ spirits in a vital area of government in the age of terrorism, and give reassurance to floating voters. The excellent Dominic Grieve should be his deputy and heir apparent.

I would place William Hague, Cameron’s new deputy, in the Treasury slot. He will mangle out-of-his-depth Alistair Darling and do wonders for backbench nerves. It will also show that Dave is serious about the main task ahead for the nation.

Right across from inexperienced, hyperactive Davey Miliband, formerly of Bananarama, another “man who’s done the job” should make his comeback. Sidelined Malcolm Rifkind is just the beast for the Foreign Office position, bringing gravitas and immense experience to the task.

David Davis must return in a prominent role, despite charges that “he’s not a team player”. His redneck skills are just the job to snuff out the Tory Boy image of many on the front bench. I would put him at Defence, where his SAS skills could be used to mount commando raids against nerdy John Hutton.

Iain Duncan Smith’s superb work on “the broken society” must be rewarded with the most appropriate portfolio in the field. His presence will be needed when the Tories are in office.

I agree with Janet Daley that Liam Fox should be returned to cover Health. He is a doctor and was a GP for many years. We need real experience at the top of British politics now, and Fox has that.

Second chapter: Tidying up
So where for George Osborne? Party Chairman is the obvious choice. He’s skilful at election management, and that will be the main task over the next year. Dave could promise him a shot at the Treasury at some time in the future. He’s young in political terms and has plenty of time to mature into a leadership role.

Michael Gove will be given the longer-term task of taking through his thinking on education. Andrew Lansley might have something like transport.

The other portfolios are much less important. The younger intake, and particularly the newer women, should be rewarded with good ministerial jobs.

Bonus Tip:
Dave, get rid of Oliver Letwin.

That then is my Shadow Cabinet. It is experienced, willing and supremely able. It has backbone (and bottom) and under David Cameron’s leadership would take the fight to the enemy.

I believe they would flatten Labour and win the general election with a handsome margin.

John Evans

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Confusion in the ranks seems to be par for the bourse where Gordon Brown is concerned — how many column inches can we get out of this man?

Teeming circus troupes of performers are now consulting their I Chings and pronouncing judgement on the rotting corpse of Brown’s political career.

As I write, The Times (London) is reporting that David Miliband (read, goggle-eyed Gollum) and Harriet Harman (read, Mad Hattie Harperson) are plotting the ultimate coup against the once greatly-to-be-desired leader. But the views of many other noted commentators are all over the place like Rorschach tests from a football crowd.

Let’s take the tour.

Matthew Parris in The Times (London) declares any revolt against Brown is all chirruping and twittering and will amount to nothing at the end of days. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, looks deeply into a pound of cheddar cheese in his fridge and, like a Roman soothsayer reading chickens’ entrails, pronounces Brown safe from the Brutus faction.

While Peter McKay in the Daily Mail entreats Brown to “bow out gracefully”, quoting Robert Browning’s Lost Leader — Never glad confident morning again. A return to Victorian values at last.

However, Janet Daley, in the Telegraph, warns that a newly-anointed four horsemen of the apocalypse could arise from Labour’s ashes to destroy David Cameron’s dreams of electoral glory. Counter-intuitive, that one.

Uber-loyalist, Polly Toynbee of the Guardian, admitted almost tearfully on Newsnight last evening that it’s all over, and poor, dear Gordon, in whom she had invested her very soul, was a total duffer and had to go. While a fellow acolyte on the same programme almost, but not quite, tore off his red rosette in despair.

The feeding fanaticism continued over at the Observer, where that elegant rune-reader Andrew Rawnsley, damned Brown as a dead man walking.

Peter Oborne in Saturday’s Mail broke the news that David Cameron’s people are talking to Alex Salmond’s people about how an SNP administration in Scotland could work together with a Tory set-up in Whitehall. Apparently, as two middle-class, patriotic parties, they could get along just fine, forming an alliance to wipe the Labour Party off the map of Britain — or Anglo-Celtic Albion, perhaps — he’s not called Cameron for nothing.

Simon Jenkins weighed in on Sunday, applauding the idea of an Anglo-Saxon England, devolved from Scotland. Ancient counties and churches could presumably be revived without the nasty socialist influences from north of the Border. England would be richer and might even pull out of the European Union.

The great Lockean libertarian William Rees-Mogg in Monday’s Times thought Miliband a British Obama, but even so, Labour should choose “Hillary” in the person of Hattie Harhaddock. Are we beginning to go ever so slightly mad over this little local difficulty?

There’s so much more of this around, and in the most sober of British circles too. Richard Littlejohn, for example, positively reins in his excitable steed, saying, “Some people are speculating that New Labour now faces annihilation. So what? Works for me.”

Either it’s the annual Silly Season, or something really is afoot here. I still think Gordon should call an immediate general election, if only to allow Cameron and Salmond to form their cross-border coalition and bring peace to this benighted Isle. The Union is dead, Long live the Union.

One thing’s for sure. Regency England is alive and well — and kicking like a mule.

Today, for some reason, I’ve been reviewing how I consume news and commentary, both on- and offline. It must be the persistent wind and rain outside.

This is not going to make a long article, so I’ll get straight to the point.

I live in England where, contrary to Robert Scoble, we have a superb selection of national broadsheet newspapers, plus a dubious pot of red-top tabloids that entertain us from time to time with their wild excesses — though none quite as bad as some in the U.S.

I find I tend to consume hard news — like “Obama wins primary”, “Brown reneges on solemn promise” — on TV rolling news programs, principally the BBC’s News 24. Never for more than 20 minutes, though, because nothing is more life dehancing than watching the same clips over and over — unless they’re about you, of course.

Tech news is best read online. Techmeme, TechCrunch (and the other Crunches) and Robert Scoble put the print press in the shade. It’s very much a case of deja vu if I glance at the technology pages in The Times or the Guardian. In fact I think they source a lot of their material from the tech blogosphere too.

Here at Syntagma Towers we only buy the print version of The Daily Mail because it loses a lot of its visual value online. It’s more of a magazine these days, so you need to have it in your hands for maximum impact.

I read the American press online, which means The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It’s so much simpler than buying late print versions flown over.

I also consume the British broadsheets in pixel form. Unmissable commentary in large blocks of text does not require a paper version in an age of big screen monitors.

The Telegraph is the first port of call, with its brilliant array of journalists : American Janet Daley (who, annoyingly, is rarely wrong about anything) ; International Business Editor, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose commentary on the credit crunch is required reading — oh, and I knew some of his relatives in Oxford. Charles Moore can be relied upon to throw fresh light on any subject, and Jeff Randall is a one-stop-shop for untangling what’s going on in the business and political firmaments. Add Matthew d’Ancona’s take on politics and the paper really is de rigueur for anyone interested in the world we think we live in. Not forgetting Simon Heffer, of course. That’s quite a galaxy of stars.

The Times (London) ditto. Anatole Kaletsky’s macroeconomic pieces are perfectly read online, as are Matthew Parris’s musings on politics and everything that moves.

So, a newspaper nut like me only reads one paper in its native print version. What does that say about the future of print?

Keep the aspidistra flying folks.