To appreciate fully how relatively badly the Tories are doing right now, we need to remember that the Blair-Brown government has been to Britain what Bush and the GOP were to the United States. If someone had told you in October 2008 after the financial crisis and during the onset of a major recession that the public was seriously considering electing McCain and giving the majority in both houses to the Republicans, you would have rightly regarded him as a madman. That is how crazy the idea of a Labour victory ought to seem to us today, but it is now quite possible that Labour will emerge from the next general election as the largest party and the head of a governing coalition. For a more accurate comparison, imagine an alternate world in which the Republicans never lost their majorities and Cheney was the 2008 Republican nominee and he won. That is what another five years for Labour would be like.

There are a few things to take away from this. First, center-right parties that cannot muster the conviction to defend the spending cuts that they are absolutely right must me made will quickly lose the public’s trust. Voters may sooner reward profligate incompetents than they will entrust power to an opposition that has no credibility on a central issue of the election. Brown is certainly hoping that they will. This means that there is no guarantee of victory by default. Republicans who hope to benefit politically from bad economic times and a flailing majority party should take note that the Tories have almost grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory against a vastly more unpopular government. If the Tories can squander a 10-point lead in a matter of weeks, the GOP can very easily squander its small generic ballot lead in the next eight months.

Something else we can learn is that complete shamelessness in the face of a record of monumental failure may succeed against all odds. As Massie observes:

Sure, common-sense demands that we laugh at any Brownite claim that Gordon is a “safe pair of hands” but that’s what he’s pitching. If you’re bold and brassy enough perhaps you can get away with anything.

Third, stylistic re-branding in the absence of a coherent, consistent message and workable policy proposals will eventually implode thanks to its own insubstantiality. The Cameroons have been very good at the first part, and the GOP might learn a thing or two from them, but they have not done very well at all on the other. Massie’s description of the way Cameron is perceived gets to part of the Tories’ problem. Cameron is seen as being “[d]ecent, amiable, brightish, but, in some sense, lacking bottom.” One is reminded of the Urquhart line about the PM he was attempting to oust: “His deepest need was that people should like him. An admirable enough trait in a spaniel…but not, I think, in a Prime Minister.” The drive to make Tories seem likeable has oddly enough deprived them of their reputation for harshness and toughness that they may need at the present time more than they have needed it in two decades.

Finally, the possibility of approaching Tory failure in a fourth straight general election should make Republicans reflect on how long they might be kept out of power. The time it takes to rebuild trust that was squandered during years of misrule and failure may take as long a period as the party was in power. The memory of Tory failures in the 1990s has been so strong and the inability of the Tories to recover has been so great that they may not be able to capitalize on their best electoral opportunity in a generation. That should make Republicans start doing a lot more thinking about how they are going to compete against a party and a President that are still more popular than they are.