No more sunshine kid

David Cameron rightly came in for a fair amount of ridicule last year for using the phrase "let sunshine win the day!" in his opening conference speech.

But as Iain Dale reports today, what the activists want to hear from him this year is "a bit of Donner und Blitzen. No sunshine thank you very much."

This apparently light-hearted comment exemplifies the change in strategy that has occurred in the past few months as the Tories realised they had seriously underestimated Gordon Brown.

Cameron thought he could win the next election simply by demonstrating he was the "sunnier" character of the two. He has since discovered that the British electorate - or at least those bits of it that talk to opinion pollsters - really aren't that shallow.