I am not making this up. There is a government recipe for chicken drumsticks. It is personally endorsed by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

Preheat your oven to 190C, remove the skin from the drumsticks and brush oil over them to stop them sticking. Then place the drumsticks in an oven-proof dish and roast for 30 minutes. Check that the chicken is cooked completely by piercing the thickest part with a clean knife. The chicken is cooked when the juices run clear. Well done.

This invaluable culinary advice comes from a new government picnic cookbook, designed, as Ed Balls has helpfully explained, to stop people serving soggy sandwiches.

As a matter of national importance, consumers must be advised on the constituent parts of tastier alfresco snacks. It turns out that, despite everything, Mr Balls thinks that there are other things, apart from revenge, that are best eaten cold.

Gordon Brown's suggestion that the choice at the next election is between Tory cuts and Labour investment is preposterous. It is a direct lie (not a word that should be resorted to often in political discourse, but needs must) to suggest that Labour would carry on increasing spending if it won the general election. It is a wilful distortion to claim that the Conservatives have announced different spending totals to Labour. The underlying intellectual error is that everything the State pays for at present, it should go on paying for, and that, therefore, all cuts will have to come out of desperately needed services. Free cookbook, anyone?

Which poses the question: how can Labour press on with such a plainly misguided campaign?

It is worth noting that many Labour people are struggling. Alistair Darling and the Chief Secretary Liam Byrne have looked incredibly uncomfortable fronting the whole thing. David Miliband's contribution has been anaemic. And a feeling that he couldn't go on spouting nonsense like this was an important reason why James Purnell resigned. But Gordon Brown and Ed “try my tasty potato salad” Balls feel no such qualms. It is, of course, possible to advance an unflattering theory about this, related to character. I would like to try something else. I want to advance my 1992 theory of Gordon Brown and the Brownites.

Here it is. The central ideas that make up Gordon Brown's policy, political strategy and day-to-day tactics were all developed between 1992 and 1994. He hasn't had an important idea since. Nor has he discarded an important idea since then, remaining doggedly faithful to every last one. And these notions, the bedrock of everything he does, were developed as a response to the two big political events of 1992 - the victory of Bill Clinton and, more centrally, the defeat of Neil Kinnock by John Major. There you have it - my 1992 theory.

It has real explanatory power. For instance, the theory explains the increasing difference between Tony Blair and Mr Brown towards the end of the former's time in office. It wasn't that Mr Blair was new Labour and Brown old Labour. It is that Mr Brown clung on to the original new Labour programme - the narrow set of policies mainly borrowed from the Clinton campaign - while Mr Blair started to go beyond new Labour as he realised that its founding policies weren't delivering.

It explains, too, why Mr Brown seemed to be a man of ideas but didn't have any when he became Prime Minister. He'd used them up. By the time he moved into No10, 1992 was 15 years ago.

But its explanatory power has never been stronger than in explaining Labour's current, apparently eccentric, campaign. There are three lessons that the 1992 campaign has taught Mr Brown that he is now trying to turn to his advantage.

The first is that John Smith's 1992 shadow budget, which laid out Labour's tax and spending figures before the general election, was a fiasco. This taught him that the biggest vulnerability for an opposition is the figures that it has to issue in a campaign. The more openly it issues these figures, the more vulnerable it is. So all of his campaigns while in office have been designed to force the Conservatives to issue something like a shadow budget. He then spends the campaign attacking their figures.

The second lesson is that the Conservative “tax bombshell” campaign - which argued that Labour's spending plans would push up taxes - was dastardly, but worked. This is their justification for spinning - I have heard Labour's hardest operators refer to it many times in their own defence - and proof that making up a figure and then pushing it and pushing it is effective politics.

The third lesson is that the real thing you are exploiting with such made up figures is not concern about the tax and spending itself, but is trust. The Conservatives won in 1992 because, even though lots of people wanted more spending on public services, they didn't trust Labour and Mr Kinnock to spend their money.

The Tory cuts versus Labour investment campaign uses all these lessons. It's an attempt to force the Tories to issue detailed figures as an answer to persistent questions; it represents the belief that barreling on with invented figures works, and that you get lost in the details; its shamelessness is justified (in the Brown mind at least) by the tax bombshell campaign; and its best hope of working is that, even if people want cuts, they are nervous of Tory cuts. They may trust David Cameron (so focus groups seem to show) but they don't fully trust the Tories.

Accept my 1992 theory and the Conservatives can repel Brown's attack. They can fight the 1992 election as Labour should have fought it. Don't get drawn into a shadow budget, it's a fool's game. Accept the need for (in the 2010 version) cuts, because people believe, they know, that they are necessary and possible.

Expose the real trick behind the bombshell. The Tories didn't mislead voters about Labour, they misled voters about themselves. Labour would have had to raise taxes, but so would the Conservatives. Mr Brown must be pressed on the cuts that he is planning.

And finally, work on trust and change. Voters didn't believe that Mr Kinnock's Labour had really changed. Repelling the Brown attack on Tory cuts means understanding that it's the Tory bit that does the damage.

daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

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