‘We are going to win this.” A senior Labour figure – not prone to over-optimism – speaking to me while canvassing on the streets of Greater Manchester.

He was talking about a particular marginal seat where the Tories are fighting hard.

But, increasingly, Labour are beginning to wonder whether they can’t win the whole damn thing.

Don’t believe it? One poll this weekend puts the Conservatives two points ahead of Labour. Given the unfairness of the British electoral system, that is a potential disaster for the Tories. It wouldn’t just leave them short of a majority. It means Labour would be by far the biggest party in the new parliament.

It also means the Tories could fail to pick up a single seat from Labour in Greater Manchester.

And it would raise a very awkward question for Conservatives everywhere. If they couldn’t win this time – with the economy having taken a hammering, and an unpopular prime minister in office – how could they ever win again?

In Conservative Central Office, the mood is a mix of concern – bordering on panic – and bafflement.

Concern, because the election strategy has been years in preparation. Every policy announcement, every attempt to set the political agenda for the day, has been meticulously mapped out by campaign supremo George Osborne and his team.

There is no plan B.

Bafflement, because Gordon Brown doesn’t seem to have done anything to bring about such a change in public opinion. It isn’t that Labour are winning. The Conservatives are losing.

So what is the problem? Policy – or personality?

The answer is both. And, where policy is concerned, it is a combination of too much and too little.

Confused? So are they.

Let me explain.

Earlier this year, we had a string of mini-manfestos from the Conservatives. Many of these restated previous policy pledges. There wasn’t that much that was actually new. Still, it was a huge amount of policy to take in, in just a few days.

Worse, many of the pledges – while radical-sounding – were hard to grasp. I still know planning officers who have difficulty working out what the Tories’ proposals for ‘open-source planning’ mean.

I understand entirely why the Conservatives did this. They wanted to appear active. They wanted people to see that they had a vision that would translate into real change. They didn’t want to fight on the tacit slogan: ‘Vote for us – just because we’re not them’.

The idea was good – but it has been totally over-cooked. The effect on the voter has been policy overload. People haven’t been left with a clear idea of what the Tories stand for. Rather, they have been left with the impression of policy for policy’s sake – and that can feel shallow. The impression of shallowness then becomes a personality issue, too.

If a party’s policies seem to lack substance and coherence, voters assume the leader lacks substance and coherence, too.

None of which is good news for an opposition party wanting to build trust.

That’s the ‘too much’ aspect. The ‘too little’ refers to the lack of clear, high-quality policies which immediately resonate with the public and give a clear impression of what a party wants to do.

Ask yourself this. Do you know what a Tory government would do to your local school? Your local hospital?

In fact they want to do a lot of things. So many things, that the average voter hasn’t got a clue what any of them are.

What people do know about the Conservatives is that they want to cut public spending to address massive national debts. Perhaps they are simply being honest about this. But for all people’s talk of wanting honesty from their politicians, talk of cuts – at a time when voters are worried about their jobs, their mortgages – is frightening.

Refusing to be specific about where all these cuts will fall only makes things worse.

Even the Tories’ election slogan – ‘We can’t go on like this’ – has taken on sinister overtones.

It was meant to be a rallying cry for social change; building a better Britain. Now they might as well slap it over an enormous picture of an axe.

What can be done to sort out this mess? In 1997, Labour, too, had a large number of policies to sell. But they wrote down their key pledges on a single card.

It seemed like a gimmick – but it left voters with a sense of a party with clear priorities, clear about what they wanted to do.

In turn, that made Tony Blair seem a more substantial figure than would otherwise have been the case.

It was a simple political tactic – but it is one the Tories could do worse than copy.

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