Och, they’re all dreadful, said the sharp Scottish lady measuring up my curtains, when I explained that I had been away at the party conferences, “I’m that fed up with them. You don’t have to listen to it all, do you?”

Normally one can get away with muttering something smilingly non-committal at this point, but not with Fiona. She put down her measuring tape and challenged me: “So come on, does it mean any more to you than it does to the rest of us? Do you trust them? Because I can’t see any good in it.”

I wish I could point Fiona towards yesterday’s Commons showpiece event, the Comprehensive Spending Review/Pre-Budget Report double bill (the CSR-PBR), for an answer. But answer came there none. It was a futile, cynical exercise in unnecessary politicking. We knew the growth forecast had to be revised downwards, we knew that Gordon Brown-Alastair Darling (or GB-AD – like the CSR-PBR they can now be rolled into one) would find a bit of extra money for health and education because they always do, and we knew they were going to pinch the Tories’ better ideas.

But the CSR-PBR didn’t answer what we didn’t know: it didn’t tell us about the vision thing. “I had not yet had time to put forward my vision about health, about education, about the future prosperity of our nation,” Mr Brown explained away his decision not to call an election. So here was his opportunity; we didn’t need the CSR-PBR for anything else.

Perhaps GB-AD could indicate the future direction of health or education policy – is it really just more money, fingers crossed? Or do they want more choice for patients? Less? Greater power for parents? Enough already? Any plans for any competition? Any belief in it? Mr Brown has shown no sign that he thinks it necessary to answer questions such as these – God forbid that he should say anything which might sound “Blairite”; stealing Tory clothes is one thing but he won’t go anywhere near those.

I didn’t fully understand the shortsightedness until I tuned back into Fiona (she seemed to be taking a hell of a time to measure up). “Mind you,” she was musing, “it was different when I was in Scotland. You could see the benefit there. Everyone can see what they’re getting. Down here, they just pay and pay and get nothing for it.”

Fiona’s not an idiot. There you have, from the mouth of someone who has lived north and south, a near-perfect expression of the reason why Mr Brown suddenly looked like losing a general election last week. He doesn’t understand Southern England, he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t understand it, and he doesn’t see any need to respond to its concerns. Put baldly, the South is paying a lot of money and it isn’t getting a measurable return. It wants to know what the plan is.

Just handing out public money helps the North and Scotland, because their economies are carried by public money. Each year, the Centre for Economic and Business Research (cebr) calculates public spending as a share of GDP for every region of the UK. The cebr adds up government spending figures, benefits and pensions and apportions EU transactions, defence and debt spending on top.

The results are quite shocking. In Northern Ireland, Wales, the North East, Scotland and the North West, public spending as a share of regional GDP is not only far higher than the national average of 44.1 per cent, it is higher than in any EU or OECD country – at, respectively, 70.5, 64.3, 63.0, 55.6 and 54.0 per cent. Well over half the economy in those areas is funded by the taxpayer. In London and the South East, by contrast, public spending accounts for under a third of GDP, in the East of England it is 38.3 per cent and in the South West, 42 per cent. According to cebr, the gap is widening, not shrinking.

Now look at GB-AD and their Cabinet colleagues. They overwhelmingly represent Scotland and the North. Mr Brown has just a single full Cabinet minister with a parliamentary seat in the south, and he is the most junior, John Denham (who? Exactly). Apart from the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, in the Midlands, all the rest are in the north of England, Wales or Scotland. Not one from the East of England, the South East or the South West.

Tony Blair’s Cabinets had a northern bias too, but it didn’t matter so much because Mr Blair himself was so obviously Middle England at heart. And he always had a sprinkling of Southern and Middle England softies – Tessa Jowell, Harriet Harman, Chris Smith, Pat Hewitt – to leaven the mix.

So when a Scottish Chancellor of the Exchequer stands up next to a Scottish Prime Minister, the English naturally look to their wallets.

This on its own explains the popularity last week, in the Southern England target seats that forced Mr Brown to ditch the election, of the Tory pledge on inheritance tax. It was an immediately comprehensible, “on your side” signal to the already well-off. Voters in the South might be better-off on paper, but they don’t necessarily feel better-off: the hours are long, the transport terrible and fiendishly expensive, and living costs high. A family home might be worth half a million quid, but the mortgage will be half that and the kids are never going to be able to afford a first flat. And they want politicians occasionally to recognise that.

Mr Brown’s failure to do so will cost him the next election. When he was Chancellor, he used his setpiece events – the CSR, PBR, Budget, conference speeches – to signal his differences with Mr Blair and underscore his dominance of the domestic agenda, and that was fine because ultimately Mr Blair was in charge. Now Mr Brown needs to find a positive message about who and what he is, and one that doesn’t frighten the voters of Southern England. Sorry if that sounds poncey, Gordon, but you know what we Southerners are like. Don’t you?

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