He really believed that the Government had made Britain better. In order to explain to him why his party is despised, I asked him to imagine the following scenario:

"Imagine you are setting out in a large group of people for a bracing country walk. You are full of the joys of spring. But a few of your number complain they are feeling tired and do not want to go. Someone suggests the tired people are given a piggy back by the energetic ones. This duly occurs.

You feel the weight of the person you are carrying, but the weather is good and the walk slightly downhill and you are still full of good cheer, so you don't mind too much.

But then fatigue sets in, the ground starts rising ahead. There are rocks and it gets slippery. A few super-fit people at the front have managed to avoid having to carry anyone and are now mere dots on the horizon.

You suggest that the people who are being carried should now get off and walk. Others agree with you.

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Originally Mr Cameron seemed to want to marginalise lots of the issues that readers of the Daily Express care passionately about: immigration, taxation, law and order, British sovereignty, standards in education and the over-riding need to improve living standards, to name but a few.

I was also of that school of thought which believed that the Conservatives are best led by a self-made person from an ordinary background, rather than by an old Etonian. It is easier for someone like that to tell society’s under-achievers and lazy oafs they must pull their socks up than it is for someone from Mr Cameron’s background, I felt.

But over the past year- since the Tory announcement last autumn on radical cuts to inheritance tax – Mr Cameron has played a blinder, first forcing Gordon Brown to “bottle” an early election and then throwing the PM on to the back foot on loads of issues. And in his conference speech this year Cameron completely convinced me that he has the correct analysis of Britain’s ills and the right approach to correcting them.

This man reali

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Something else has really got on my nerves today.

The BBC has been giving loads of coverage today to Third World pressure groups who are complaining that the G7 western countries will probably cut aid to the developing world because of the financial crisis. The Millennium Development goals are in danger, apparently.

Interviewers on the Today programme and the like have been happy to join in with the idea that America, Britain and the rest are the villains of the piece here because they may scale back the size of their donations.

Yet nobody has mentioned the blindingly obvious point that the countries which are awash with cash these days are not America, Britain and the rest of Europe. It is the Arab oil states, Singapore, Russia and China which are sitting on huge sovereign wealth funds full of hundreds of billions of pounds.

The Arabian countries sit half way between Africa and south east Asia – the two zones where most of the world’s poorest people live. Why no questioning of their failure to stump up cash for a global anti-poverty drive to help their regional neighbours?

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I was amazed at how many of the morning newspapers gave the Prime Minister’s speech a grovelling write-up. But the Daily Express can be relied on to tell the truth about this lousy Government – no matter how unpopular it makes us in Downing Street.

Here are just a few things Labour has done to harm the interests of hardworking families who play by the rules:

1) Dragged a million middle earners into top rate income tax by not uprating the thresholds in line with earnings.

2) Put up National Insurance contributions by 10 per cent despite denying it had any plan to do so.

3) Allowed council tax to double in a decade – using it as a stealth tax on homeowners.

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All that has happened here is that the Lib Dems have sniffed the air and detected that hardworking voters are up in arms about the amount of tax they are paying to support a bloated public sector and benefits claimants.

The Lib Dems under Nick Clegg are fearful of losing a lot of seats in the south of England to the Conservatives unless they shift their official position on tax and spend.

But cutting taxes is difficult and will require tough battles to be fought against the vested interests which have grown fat on hand-outs.

A party which is simply taking an opportunist stance on such a matter cannot be relied to see it through. Most of you will remember the lie that New Labour was not a tax-raising party.

Gordon Brown promised not to raise standard or higher income tax rates while Tony Blair claimed before the 1997 election that the party had no plans to raise any tax at all. There followed more than 70 tax rises and the biggest pub

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