Although on the surface (so far) all the data have been supporting what the Coalition wants to do in terms of Britain’s finances, the ConDemned are heading for big trouble unless some unpleasant facts are faced – and soon.

Those of you with O-level (not GCSE) maths will already know that we are, slowly, losing the deficit-reduction battle. Our public sector net debt is scheduled to rise every year between now and 2014-15, from £932 billion to nearly £1.3 trillion. By then, the National Debt will be twice the Government’s entire annual revenues. This is because, although the deficit is coming down – from £149 billion to £37 billion – total interest charges on accumulated debt will rise over the next five years from £44 billion to £63 billion. (The emphases there are for the 139 economist academics who think this doesn’t matter).

In short, even with Draper Osborne’s austerity-cut curtains, we ‘re treading deeper and deeper water. Just as important, however, is that the Coalition is showing the same ineptitude about tone, manner and persuasion as it did (as the Tory Party) during the election.

There is a triple-whammy problem here when it comes to the persuasion war – which is, let’s face it, what we’re in.

First, the 39% still desperate to vote for the Poolswinner Party clearly can’t add up – or are very bright and have thus skipped Page One. This axis stretches from Will Hutton to the Sun reader: and these people need simple, powerful demonstrations of what will happen if this continues. (Many of them need the thing to happen before they’ll wake up.)

Second, a brand-personality exercise aka scam has been conducted by the TUC (with a bit of help from distracted Labour) to make this contest a fight to the death between Wicked Baby-spearing Etonian Bastards and Socially Responsible Selfless academics and trade unionists.

And third, we are not helped by the fact that there are no bankers in prison – and lots of the silly buggers are still awarding themselves entirely inappropriate bonus packages.

So it’s rock and hard place time – but this is a billet constructed entirely by grubby Coalition politics, greedy bankers, and the usual risible level of Cameroon PR/homework. All the boys at UNITE et al are doing is milking it.

Oldies like me can remember the last time this happened: the Prime Minister was Ted Heath, and the enemy was Arthur Scargill. Scargill’s miners did a dirty, hard and dreadful job, and didn’t think they were getting paid enough to do it. Heath lost the public debate, and the radical chic hordes took against him – supporting the miners. (To my eternal regret, I was among those hordes at the time.)

I have always believed that this period in 1974 was the pivotal moment in British history – not Mrs Thatcher’s election five years later: that was just the final result of it. In my oddly indecipherable (and lonely) position as a hater of both Thatcherism and New Labour, everything went wrong after 1974: mindless Luvvies and Fluffies grew in number, industry died, communities declined, big business thrived, nasty people emerged from under stones, life balance got forgotten, socialism reinvented itself as deadly pc, and eventually – when the Mad Handbag was finally hoist upon her poll tax – substance, belief, principles, goals and creative thought departed from politics. They were replaced by focus groupies, shallow thought, spin, Alistair Campbell and a great many other forms of governance cancer.

Today, at the end of it all, we have a very malodorous residue. A fundamentally right-wing Government is diluting its task on the basis of anxieties about what a tiny minority Party thinks. (And lest LibDemVoice contest that, your current poll standing is an unsurging 12% Stephen). A profoundly left-wing TUC is gaining the moral high ground based on specious reasoning and easy access to the airwaves. A more right-wing media set seems hellbent on destabilising the Coalition at every opportunity. A neo-fascist Guardian Group has abandoned free speech in the fight to get its pc-heroes of the Left back in the game. And all the while, econo-fiscal reality is heading for our shores.

In 1974, there was an oil crisis – but nothing like the structural nature and global size of the one we’ve got now. In 1974, people had much better ideas about how to behave. And for all its eventual destructiveness, the Opposition did know what to do and was committed to doing it. None of those things apply today. Last time we wound up with Thatcher; I don’t like to think about what we’ll get if there’s a next time.

There really is only one solution: risky or not, the Tories must cut themselves loose from the Coalition. Only if they do this – and go balls-out with a patriotic, eurosceptic platform of cutting costs and expanding export growth – will they get unqualified support from the right wing media, and a clear majority from the electorate.

But as old Ted the sailor found out some 35 years ago, timing is everything. The first thing Cameron needs to do is what The Slog asked him to do last May: dismiss the sloppy, dozy pr team he has round him, and get some people with fire in their bellies on the job. Another excellent move would be to give IDS a planning role in the resulting election (the bloke is an organisational genius on stuff like this) and get David Davis back in the tent: he is sound on liberty, liked by the grass roots, and the direction-of-pissing principle is always important in politics.

Heath went to the country when things already looked out of control, and voters had faith in Wilson’s ability to control the Unions. The Cameroons need things to get confrontational – but not anarchic. Equally, they need a reason to go to the country again. I don’t think it would be that hard to get the LibDem toys flying out of the pram: indeed, Simon Hughes and Vince Cable may well be looking for precisely the same excuse.

This may all read like cynicism, but in reality it represents ruthlessness in a good cause. Win the debate, take off the millstone, and get the power to do what’s right for Britain: that’s the Slog strategy, and I’m certain it’s the right one.

But you know, I don’t think there’s a cat in hell’s chance of it happening. And that’s very worrying indeed.