Cameron’s ‘aroma’ is the key for the Tories. For Brown, it is all-out class warfare

David Cameron has so far baited Gordon Brown with the confidence of a schoolboy teasing a roped guard dog. The Chancellor has wanted to unleash himself on his opponent from the outset, but was restrained by No. 10 Downing Street on the basis that such attacks would be a waste of energy during the new party leader’s media honeymoon. Best wait until the public grow sick of the new-look Tories, the Blairites counselled — and then the Chancellor’s joyless team of character assassins could get to work.

Six months later and time has only strengthened Mr Cameron’s opinion-poll lead, and sharpened the focus on Mr Brown’s weaknesses. No. 10 has appeared to sit back and enjoy the Conservative portrayal of the Chancellor as a ‘roadblock to reform’, giving the Tories time and space to consolidate their message and take full advantage of a still receptive media. To the Treasury’s fury, Mr Cameron has stubbornly refused to implode.

What is less understood — or reported — is how Mr Cameron’s team have been using this period to prepare themselves for battle, when it comes. The project now under way in their policy laboratory is to define ‘Cameronism’ before someone else does it for them. At the heart of this is a single concept: that politics and government are overlapping but separate entities, and that effective government does not just mean passing laws, but also moulding popular culture.

The most intriguing part of the gameplan is the idea of creating a Cameronian ‘aroma’ — which, I am told, is ‘vastly more important’ than any specific policies he may eventually advocate. The task, as one senior policymaker puts it, is to ‘create an aroma around the Conservatives so people naturally imagine our policies are the right ones’ without necessarily knowing what they are.