Cameron accentuates the positive for manifesto launch

Be gone dull care! David Cameron chose a warm April day in Swindon to announce his manifesto. The sun streamed through the windows of a bright white room and the chill of Labour's wintry event 24 hours earlier seemed a world away.

The prime minister made a speech without a trace of negativity. All the language smacked of springtime: "aspiration", "ambition", "a good life", "a brighter future" and "security". No mention of Labour, Ed Miliband or back-stabbing. Beforehand, Mr Blue Sky, his perky old theme tune, played on the sound system.

He used "security" in a variety of contexts: keeping the nation safe from its enemies, keeping the national finances safe, not to mention the unspoken point about his own job security.

Most startlingly there was this: "We are the party of working people offering security at every stage of your life," he announced, every bit as brazenly as Mr Miliband had called Labour the party of fiscal responsibility. Coming next: "Brussels is brilliant" - Nigel Farage. "No, it's rubbish" - Nick Clegg.

The document itself is a reversion to industry standard: not the big-budget clothbound "invitation to join the government of Britain" that the Tories produced in 2010 (I'm still waiting for the phone call), nor the ascetic little document Labour has offered this time.

Here is an old-style A4 glossy brochure with full-colour pictures of winsome kiddies, active pensioners and the working people the Tories now love. Hard-working people, they used to say, but perhaps that failed the focus-testing.

And between the pictures there are old-style promises: Ladeez 'n' gennulmen, let's hear it for the world-famous escapologist and prestidigitator Manny Festo! I counted 83 headline "commitments"; even those forgotten Cameron favourites, the environment and the Big Society, got a mention, And an old show tune went through my head: "Something appealing/ something appalling/ something for everyone/ it's comedy tonight!"

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Instead, Mr Osborne was allowed to speak, though only briefly. (I am worried about the success of his weight-loss programme: on current trends, verified by the Office for Budget Responsibility, by 2019-20 he will have vanished to nothing, even if the deficit has not.) And Theresa May was allowed to announce: "I have expelled from the UK more hate preachers than any home secretary before me!" (No verification cited.)

Then came the man himself. It was hard to work out the exact purpose of Mr Cameron's speech. It sounded like one of his party conference efforts, designed to fire up the activists, which are usually rather good. But there were only a handful of local activists. The rest of the audience comprised the shadow cabinet and the college kids. Both groups were smartly dressed, though elderly chairmen of Wiltshire Conservative Associations wear suits and ties and offer applause with more conviction. The students mostly looked baffled.

The audience at home may see the headline promises and a short clip from the speech. They may sense a rejuvenated leader who has rediscovered some of his old zip. But I watched him as he thumped his fist downwards to emphasise a point. And he stopped it well short of the lectern, as though too nervous to offer complete determination.

The Tories know they had taken the abuse of Mr Miliband too far and now seem inhibited, forced back towards "good life" inanities. There is a coherent case to be made about why the country might be better off under the Conservatives than Labour. I am still waiting for someone to make it.

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