John Rentoul: Young David marches towards Gordon's big guns

The PM should not rush a decision on an early election. Mr Cameron could still surprise him

It is do-or-die time for David Cameron. If this week's Conservative conference in Blackpool goes badly, Gordon Brown might call an election and finish him off. Yet the Tory leader seems to be reacting to the sound of gunfire by marching towards it. Last year, he delivered two big conference speeches, at the start and the end of proceedings. This year, he is making only one long speech. Everything hangs, therefore, on one performance, as it did two years ago, when he clinched the party leadership on the same stage with a sparkling and apparently off-the-cuff speech.

That parallel is a clue as to how matters are likely to turn out this week. The doom and disaster foretold has been overdone. Yes, Labour had a successful conference; the opinion polls are in Brown's favour; and the semi-house-trained polecat has marked his territory. Norman Tebbit last week provided the sharpest critique yet of Cameron's "lurch to the left". It was vintage stuff. It brought back memories of the time I got to know Tebbit – on a roller coaster in Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. That was in 1992: he had come to urge the Danes to vote No in the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, and I had come with the BBC to film him doing so. And to interview him. On a roller coaster. I fear metaphors of an unsubtle kind may have been deployed. The point being that Tebbit has long shown a flair for both mischief and media attention-seeking.

So when he said last week that he was "quite sure that Margaret Thatcher knew exactly what she was doing" taking tea with the Browns at No 10, he knew how to unsettle what he called the "over-excitable youths" in Cameron's office. But they should remember that, for him, everything goes back to the Great Betrayal. As he explains in an article in this week's Spectator, it all goes back "to when the Euro-fanatics ambushed Margaret Thatcher and dragged her into the ERM before they finished her off in 1990". That was the "lurch to the left which cost it [the Conservative Party] the elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005". Well, that is one way of looking at recent history.

One of the over-excitable youths rose to the bait, though. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said: "Norman Tebbit is out of touch with where the Conservative movement is." Wrong response. It is not true; and it looks disrespectful. Remember: hug him like a hoodie. It works for Gordon.

The truth is that Tebbit speaks for many in the Tory party. Even if they do not buy the whole Great Betrayal thesis, they are impressed with the confidence with which he expresses a powerful Tory instinct. It is the tension between that instinct – the traditionalist tendency – and the modernising impulse that provides the template for reporting this week's conference. That is another reason for thinking that the Tories will have a difficult conference.

The tension within Team Cameron between what might be called the "core-vote" and the "centre-ground" strategy has become the standard device for interpreting what leading Tories are saying. Whereas every pronouncement by a Cabinet minister at Labour's conference in Bournemouth was scrutinised for hints about election timing, every statement from the shadow Cabinet in Blackpool will be decoded for evidence of traditionalist or modernising tendencies. You do not need to be a political genius to work out which kind of media scrutiny is more helpful to the party concerned. All the more surprising that Sayeeda Warsi, promoted by Cameron as a new TV-friendly face, should in our interview with her today revive those nasty-party memories.

No wonder Tory right-wingers and Labour hotheads alike think they detect the prospect of meltdown in Blackpool. Both groups are likely to be disappointed. Cameron is a more impressive leader than the "style-over-substance" jibe allows. People have their doubts about him, as they do about Brown, but when they are exposed to him face-to-face they tend to respond positively. His 45-minute Newsnight interview last month tested him under the political equivalent of exam conditions. His life story is one of the brilliant student, who may leave the preparation a bit late but who rises to the occasion when it matters.

Nor does everything hang on the big speech on Wednesday. Starting on Andrew Marr's couch this morning, he will be on television every day for four days. That may rebalance some of Brown's positive impressions from last week. Cameron's advisers were, not for the first time, glued to the televised focus group conducted by Frank Luntz, the US Republican pollster, in which approval for the Prime Minister was heavily conditional and time-limited. "He's not messed it up, that's about the best we can say."

Nor are the opinion polls as scary for the Tories as they are presented. The polls carried out since Brown's speech on Monday show a modest conference bounce: Labour up three points, Tories down three. But the average ratings over the past two months are Labour 39 per cent, Tories 34. That is not great for either party. Brown would be reckless to make an election decision this weekend on the basis of polls after his conference but before Cameron's. And he has published enough books about courage to know the difference between it and recklessness.

The big unknown is how the Tory party will behave this week. Perhaps it really does have a death wish, but it is more likely that the prospect of an early election will frighten it into doing whatever Cameron wants. As long as what he wants is reasonably clear, there is a serious risk, from Brown's point of view, that the Conservative conference will be hailed as more successful than the low expectations of it.

What then? If Brown douses the speculation about an early election that he encouraged – in defiance of his promise that Parliament rather than the Prime Minister should decide the date – it will look, as Osborne said, as if he has "bottled it". Brown has unleashed the feral beast of the media and may find it difficult to control where it goes next, with his reputation for competence at stake. This week may look like do-or-die time for the Leader of the Opposition. We may look back on it as a turning point for the Prime Minister.

Further reading: 'Words that Work: It's Not What You Say It's What People Hear' by Frank Luntz (Hyperion, £9.99)