Is this his “most audacious move yet?”

In what the Observer is describing this morning is David Cameron’s most “audacious bid yet to capture Labour’s political ground” the Tory leader says his is “the true party of ‘working people’ in Britain.”

In his New Year message he says that the Tories will become “the party that represents working people rather than the rich and powerful” and declares that the next twelve months will see “Labour’s dark side” coming to the fore.

But for how long can the Tory leader go on making such pronouncements without alienating his core vote?

As the end of year chart showing the Tory position in the average of ICM, Populus and YouGov polls shows support for the party has dropped a touch since the heady days of last May. How much of this is down to a lack of enthusiasm amongst those who look to the party to follow a more traditional approach?

Certainly the progress has been solid and has mostly been sustained but it barely puts the Tories in a position where it might win most seats, never mind securing the MPs to form a majority government.

The gamble, clearly, is that traditional Tories have nowhere else to go and they can either like it or lump it. It will be interesting to see how this develops in 2007.

The PBC polling average ends the year on CON 37%: LAB 32.3%: LDs 17.3%. On these figures the Baxter seat calculation puts the Tories 13 ahead of Labour while the Wells formula has them 19 seats behind. In the betting the Tories are 0.86/1 to win most seats with Labour on 1.16/1

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Mike Smithson