What do the Tories do now?

Was that it?

That was the big game changing moment we had been so afraid (and the Tories so sure) was going to change the course of the election?

‘Meh’ seems to be the general response. I will wait to see the polling but it doesn’t feel today like the game has – in fact – been changed. As Simon Fitzpatrick pointed out on these pages yesterday, there were no real rabbits. There wasn’t even a hat. Any Tory MP in a marginal constituency hoping for a boost yesterday probably had a pretty restless night last night.

What seemed most remarkable was that the thrust of this budget didn’t seem to be to offer anything particularly Tory, but to respond to Labour attack lines. Once again, Ed Miliband has reshaped government behaviour in opposition, something he has managed repeatedly over the course of the last five years and gets too little credit for.

So what will the Tories do now? The polls are still – to all intents and purposes – tied. The way the votes are distributed mean this generally favours Labour (though with the potentially catastrophic collapse of Scottish Labour, this may well be less the case). The Tories can’t afford  things to continue as they are but are rapidly running out of game changing moments.

One thing that is even less likely after yesterday is any one to one debate between Cameron and Miliband. Despite a wall of sound coming at him from the Tory benches, Miliband put in a widely praised response to the budget. There’s no way Cameron wants the public seeing that Ed. Especially without hundreds of jeering supporters behind him. Instead it seems we are going to have the grotesque farce of Ed and Dave being interviewed in the same building at the same time but not appearing on screen together. When Ed is making his case to the nation, Cameron will be cowering in the Green Room.

The anti-Ed fervour from the Tories and their press pals is going to get a lot worse. I know you don’t currently think that’s possible but sadly it is. One day soon, we may look back on kitchengate with fondness for more innocent times. Lynton Crosby makes street fighters look like gentlemen and every blow the Tory campaign try to lay on us will be below the belt. Expect that bacon sandwich photo to be on endless rotation between now and the 7th May. Ed is weird will be the constant refrain.

The Tories remain in a quandary over UKIP. They are losing voters to them but the nastier they get in trying to win these back, the more they risk losing from the centre. UKIP are likely to win no more than a handful of seats. If the Tories wake up after the election having spent all their energy trying to out flank them from the right, they will find themselves in a very difficult place indeed. If Cameron can’t fall over the line, questions around his leadership are inevitable. The Tories chose David Cameron not because they loved him, but because they thought he could win. They didn’t learn to love him when he only sort of won. They will not be in the mood to elect a modernising successor.

The next election is going to be very close. Who will be in Downing Street come June (I won’t say May as post-election negotiations may go on significantly longer than last time around) is a matter both of intense speculation and deep uncertainty. The future of the two main political parties in Britain has probably never been so unclear and unknown (there is certainly a mirror column to this one to be written to ask some similar questions of Labour).

The Tories will spend the next few month throwing every scrap of mud they can find at us and at Ed. Will it work? I hope not. But the longer they fail to cross over in the polls the more desperate they will get. It will not be palatable. It is our job to also ensure it is unsuccessful.