P.M. IN WAITING:

Things are looking up but can Dave really deliver? (Melissa Kite and Patrick Hennessy, 28/05/2006, Sunday Telegraph)

[H]ow well is he really doing? Polls suggest that Labour is now in serious trouble and that Mr Cameron is succeeding in the first challenge he set himself when he became leader, late last year: to begin rescuing the damaged Tory brand.

He has started to persuade voters that his party is changing, but not enough of them, yet, to send him to Number 10. To borrow the Blairite phrase: "A lot done, but a lot left to do."

His staff realise this, and it explains the frenetic pace the Tory leader is setting. After "Beckingham Palace" last Sunday, Mr Cameron delivered a speech to the Google Zeitgeist Europe conference, in Hertfordshire on Monday, in which he launched a discussion of the "happiness" agenda and said that there was more to life than money.

It could have backfired, with some critics immediately mocking the assertion. However, he held firm and insisted that politicians had a right to explore such esoteric issues.

He followed it with a polished performance at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday.

Not for the first time, commentators concluded that he had got the better of the Prime Minister, with a forceful line of attack - on immigration - and a nicely timed joke accusing Mr Blair of bogusly blaming past Tory leaders for his own mistakes - "He'll be blaming Robert Peel next."

Leaks from the recording of his Desert Island Discs prompted more admiring headlines after it emerged that he chose Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West, by Benny Hill as one of his favourite records, by way of homage to his first childhood memories.

His other choices included Bob Dylan, The Killers and Mendelssohn. A case of Scotch whisky and a cookbook were perhaps less inspiring and may have owed much to a Blair-style attempt to be all things to all voters.

However, evidence was about to come that his efforts to "rebrand" the party, which some denounce as superficial, have had an impact, even if only a limited one.