THE CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIST STEVE HILTON IS SHOWING HIMSELF TO BE A POLICY WONK WHO CAN’T ADAPT TO CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES

Whether or not the story is accurate, the Guardian’s piece this morning about Steve Hilton’s concern for Whitehall workers to have ‘a living wage’ highlights for any informed observer why the Tories are coming across as so flatfooted, lacklustre and polite.

At a point in history when we may well be lucky to have a currency at all by the end of 2011, Mr Hilton’s main ‘off message’ disagreement with the rest of the Party involves low paid workers employed as cleaners and catering staff across government departments in London. Apart from the fact that it would be better to worry about hopelessly underpaid nurses and pensioners (fairly or not, is there a single voter in the UK who gives a monkeys about anyone in Whitehall?) one has to ask about this man’s priorities.

The Lord deliver us from policy wonks. Having been lambasted last week by a hypersensitive Tory HQ for running a well-sourced piece about Cameron reconsidering his advisors, I will now go further: if the Tory leader isn’t reconsidering his strategy advice, then he must be even more dumb than my media moles tell me he is.

Have any readers rung Tory HQ lately? The phones are manned by E L Whisteys, and the folks actually dealing with real journalists are asleep. I’m not going to ring them this morning for a comment on the now neck-and-neck situation in the marginals, because they won’t have one. How incredible is that?

This has always been Cameron’s election to lose, and he is losing it in a manner I freely admit was not foreseen by The Slogger. But then, I couldn’t imagine that, when faced with the Evil Knitting Circle of Darkness, the Conservative Party would worry its anal head about cleaners in Downing Street; and worse still, think about having a Manifesto pledge to give them a rise – at the height of a deficit crisis. It doesn’t get any more incompetently stupid than this.

Losing an election before it’s even started may be some kind of record. I can only offer a view as an experienced communications strategist: if the Hiltons think things are tough now, wait until Gordon fires the starting pistol. Mandelson is still only in second gear; once out of the blocks, you won’t even see his moves, let alone be able to parry them.