I spent last week on a campsite in picturesque Shropshire. Shooting the breeze with fellow campers – the middle class, middle-of-the-road, family orientated types that Mr Cameron was supposed to appeal to – yielded only a ­chorus of derision for the Tory leader.

Time and again people commented that they had no idea what he stood for. What would happen to their taxes under Cameron? Did he want tougher immigration controls? How would he make schools and the NHS any better? Was he instinctively tough on law and order or just a hoodie hugger at heart? Nobody had any idea and I, as a full-time political observer, could give few definitive answers.

Taxes might, in time, come down a little under Cameron, I reckoned. More emphasis would be placed on discipline in schools but on the NHS there were worrying signs of the Tories taking the side of doctors rather than patients. As for immigration, I simply had no idea whether Cameron was an enthusiastic multiculturalist or felt excessive inward migration was endangering the basic character of Britain.

According to the original political timetable envisaged by Cameron and his supporters this should not matter much. In his first two years he aimed to “decontaminate” the Tory brand by convincing voters that his was not the Nasty Party. To be fair he seems to have achieved this. There was little indication that my fellow campers felt the Tories were inherently unpleasant. But instead they seemed to think of them as the Useless Party. And that cannot be good news.

Under Cameron’s original plan, the Tories would have rolled their policies out from this autumn and all through 2008 so the electorate would be fully familiar with their central thrust by the time of the next general election in spring 2009. Like any good chef, Dave intended first to clean his kitchen and then get on with cooking up a feast, bringing all the ingredients to the boil at just the right time.

But while he is preparing for dinner, Brown may have him for breakfast. I have been warning of the likelihood of an early election since the turn of the year. The prospect of a snap poll in October is at last being taken seriously and almost everyone thinks a contest will be held within nine months.

Last week Cameron appeared at last to have sniffed the danger, telling Channel 4: “We’ve got the candidates, we’ve very effectively raised money, cleared a lot of our debts, and we’re ready.” But within the Brown camp that was perceived as empty bravado designed to dissuade Labour from going to the country early.

With his shadow chancellor George Osborne currently writing an outline manifesto, there is no doubt that the Tories could have policies in the field in time for an October poll. But that is not good enough because many of those policies will appear to have simply fallen out of the sky.

In order to convince people he is more than a slick PR man, Cameron must publicly attach himself to half a dozen key political principles now and bang on about them every day until his aides are bored rigid. Only when that point is reached will ordinary voters have even started to notice.

Last week the Tory leader abandoned his planned family holiday in France. Harsh as it sounds, he should not even have been taking an overseas vacation in the first place. Neither should any key figure within his shadow cabinet have been allowed to slope off for a month this summer.

The complacent Conservat­ives are miles behind where they need to be to stand any realistic chance of winning an election this year. Foolishly, they banked on Brown being an instant disaster who would be far too cautious to fight them early.

But he has Tina at his side now and the Tories have just six weeks to lure her away. If she is still there by mid-September then an early poll will doom them to another four years in opposition.