Cameron marks two years in charge

A recent opinion poll at the weekend put the Tories on 41 per cent - 11 points ahead of Labour and enough to secure a 29-seat majority at a General Election.

A string of favourable ratings have had the bonus effect of silencing the more troublesome elements inside the party, who scarcely four months ago were acting like they had it in for the Witney MP.

Over the summer, lest we forget, Mr Cameron came under attack from all sides for being variously too right wing, too left wing, too vague, inconsistent on grammar schools and in Rwanda while his constituents' homes were being flooded.

He was not helped by his party's policy reviews, which were set up to sweep away the unsuccessful policies of the past, but managed to produce ideas that were so unpopular - like charges on supermarket parking - that even Mr Cameron had to admit some of them were "barmy".

While the Tories were creating confusion, Labour was galloping ahead under a new Prime Minister who won praise for his handling of a terrorist attack, floods and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.

What changed? Mr Cameron's luck, for a start. After surviving a miserable period when little seemed to go right for him, the Tory leader has been gifted a succession of exploitable revelations, from missing child benefit discs to Labour's secret donations. And he has made good work of them.

But politics is about more than luck and Mr Cameron has shown a resilience that was by no means inevitable following his rise to the top of his party.

To repeatedly claim, as he did convincingly in the run-up to the Tories' autumn conference, that he wanted a snap General Election which few believed he could win, demonstrated either impressive self-belief or a capacity for bluffing, both useful qualities in politics.

As it happened, the non-election - prompted in part by the Tories' eye-catching move to reduce the burden of inheritance tax on the wealthy - turned out to be a good result for Mr Cameron, who made hay with the "Bottler Brown" label.

Since then Labour has been forced on to the defensive and Mr Cameron has benefited from more sympathetic media coverage, which has amplified his criticisms of Government.

During a recent bout of Prime Minster's Questions Mr Cameron felt able to ask whether Gordon Brown was "cut out for the job".

It is a question that just a few months ago would have triggered howls of derision from the Labour benches. That Mr Cameron can get away with such an assault is testament to the turnaround in his fortunes, for which he deserves credit.

But knocking ministers is the easy part. Neither inflicting damage on Mr Brown nor lulling a fractious party into submission will be enough to guarantee the keys to Number 10.

The challenge for Mr Cameron, as he enters his third year as leader, will be to establish himself as a Prime Minister-in-waiting by setting out in greater detail what he would do as leader of the country.

In his conference speech he revealed some pithy principles for action, including "giving people more opportunity and power over their lives, making families stronger and society more responsible and making Britain safer and greener".

Over the coming months the pressure on Mr Cameron to deliver a more detailed, coherent platform will intensify, as will the scrutiny of the small print. Soon he will have to convince voters that he is up to the top job himself.

It is not hard to imagine Mr Brown taking advantage of a lucky break, shaking off his party's blues and hammering home his long record on investment in public services and economic stability to pull off a fourth General Election victory for Labour.

But, despite that possibility, few would dispute that two years after taking the reins of a damaged Conservative Party, and just six years after becoming an MP, Mr Cameron stands a decent chance of becoming the next Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron admitted the past year had been full of "ups and downs".

He said he believed his party was the only political force able to deliver real change for the country.

Mr Cameron said: "It's fair to say there have been some ups and downs over the last two years but it is an honour and a privilege to lead the Conservative Party.

"We've made so much progress and I think the Conservatives are now established as the only party with the vision and ideas to deliver the real change this country needs after more than ten years of Labour failure."

The MP decided against making a big deal out of the anniversary and spent the day visiting the offices of Greenpeace.

His decision to make a speech on decentralised energy at the headquarters of the radical environmental campaign group was symbolic of his drive over the duration of his leadership to widen the party's base of support.

Ed Vaizey, Conservative MP for Wantage, who has known Mr Cameron for 15 years since they worked together in Conservative Central Office, said the Tory leader had managed incredibly well over the past couple of years.

He said: "It's been a roller-coaster rise and he's shown several qualities.

"The pressure of being leader of the opposition is enormous, in some ways almost more than the Prime Minister because he doesn't have the huge resources behind him.

"He has kept true to his word when he said what he was going to do when he ran for leadership, which was stick to the centre ground and modernise the party."

Mr Vaizey added: "He's managed incredibly. Even those who knew him before he became leader may not have appreciated his ability to handle that kind of pressure."