Will Brown trump Osborne

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's announcement that a Conservative government will raise the inheritance tax threshold has predictably gone down a storm in Blackpool, and interestingly, Labour's initial attack seems focused on how the tax cut will be paid for rather than the idea itself.

It begs the question once again in my mind whether the Tories are being too cautious, and whether Gordon Brown's response will now be to pledge to scrap inheritance tax altogether, or, at the very least, exempt all family homes from its ambit.

Restricting inheritance tax to a "millionaires only" tax is a surefire voter winner with the aspirational middle-classes the Tories need to win back, and Brown is far too smart not to realise this.

The Prime Minister has already shown himself a past master in the art of political cross-dressing. Surely this is a case for more shameless stealing of the Tories' clothes.

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.

Don't do it, Gordon

Other siren voices, besides mine, who are now counselling against an early election include Martin Kettle and The Observer Leader Column.