Gordon Brown needs to improve his spin

Conservatives who tuned in to Terry Wogan's breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 in recent days will have been squirming as the veteran broadcaster and his listeners turned their satirical fire on David Cameron. Purporting to have misheard his "I'm a man with a plan" line during the Tory conference speech, they have been debating whether he actually said 'I'm a man with a flan', 'I'm a man with a van' or even 'I'm a man with a pram'.

The scepticism of Wogan and his followers is justified. Cameron, despite delivering yet another speech devoid of policy meat, was treated the next day to the kind of headlines the Tories would have written for themselves: "A Prime Minister in waiting," drooled the sometimes Cameron-sceptic Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

This highlights one of the differences between David Cameron and Gordon

Brown. Cameron has a good old-fashioned hack as his media minder - former News of the World editor Andy Coulson. In him the Tories have an operator who can read what the media will do in the way Alastair Campbell did for Tony Blair in the early days.

None of the people who have served in this role for Brown has measured up to Coulson or Campbell and it is no surprise in media circles that, in pursuit of his personal survival strategy, Brown has been making changes - and that Campbell himself is set to reappear in Westminster.

In last week's reshuffle, Brown sidelined two key figures. His press officer, Damian McBride, often accused of counter-productive attempts to bully journalists, has been given a "strategy" role that comes with the tag "not allowed to speak to journalists", while Stephen Carter, who arrived at Number 10 in January to be Brown's strategy chief, has been made a minister in Peter Mandelson's Business department. He is to be replaced by a new director of communications, yet to be appointed.

Like Mandelson, Carter is not an MP