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In a flash, the political landscape has changed. It is as if we went into that cupboard in the Narnia story and came through to an utterly different place.
Two out of three Sunday newspaper opinion polls showed the Conservative Party ahead of Labour. It is the first time for 13 long years that the Conservatives have hit the 40 per cent support mark in a poll by ICM. Previous (very temporary) leads of the Conservatives over Labour in recent times have been based on Labour unpopularity. This is the first time the Tory Party has shown signs of actually being popular itself. If this is right, it changes everything for everybody in politics.
For Conservatives, as they look around, suddenly there are mountains where there were valleys. Where the ground was dry and barren, there are now green fields.
For years people have been so ashamed to
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| Tory surprise and delight at being popular is tempered by awareness that this new leader is no Thatcherite |
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admit that they vote Conservative that pollsters have had to find ways to adjust their raw figures upwards to estimate the true level of Tory support. But now it has clearly become socially acceptable to be a Conservative again. Indeed, it might soon reach the point where the boot is on the other foot and to be a Labour supporter seems old-fashioned.
There is one problem, though, for hard-core Tories. David Cameron is a centrist, not a true believer. He does not emphasise low taxes. He does not talk about privatising all schools. Indeed his friend George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, has talked about making state schools so good that no one would want to go to any other kind of school.
Tribal Tory surprise and delight at being popular and in the lead is tempered by awareness that this new leader is no 
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