This weekend David Cameron travels to the Tory Conference in Manchester having failed in one of his central goals. Although the Opposition Leader has gone a long way towards establishing himself — and redefining his party — as a modern, undogmatic and compassionate force, and given better indications on policy direction than he has been credited for, Mr Cameron has not inspired public passion. There is much less antipathy but little enthusiasm among the electorate for him or his party. Britain is about as excited at the prospect of a Conservative government as at the purchase of a new toaster.

Well, thank heavens for that. For politicians anxious not to disappoint, voter scepticism is an asset beyond price. Tories should count their lucky stars that nobody really believes they’ll make much difference — or not fast. That way, nobody is going to be disappointed. Mr Cameron’s team may get the time, the space and the public patience to make a quiet start, step by step, at the many things they want to do.

So, although this coming conference will probably be Mr Cameron’s last chance to set pulses racing, it is greatly to be hoped that he fails. In politics, love always, but always, turns sour.

Something approaching a conventional wisdom has established itself in commentary on the progress of the Cameron project. This autumn’s cliché of choice is that the Tories have failed to “seal the deal”. I heard the remark repeated often enough, and gleefully, from the podium at Labour’s conference in Brighton this week.

The cliché, I think, is true. Cameron Conservatives are missing something that it is difficult for polling to measure, but which — when present — we can feel in our bones. Real hope; real excitement; a real sense of change. None of my Tory friends, not even the most energetic cheerleaders for their young leader, would privately pretend that these things are in the wind this autumn.

There was a time once — another autumn — when they were. We last felt that heady breeze before Tony Blair’s new Labour government swept to power in 1997. Britain came as close as you can in politics to falling in love.

And I would argue that, for more reasons than one, this was wholly bad for the new Labour project in government. First, basking in popular adulation, Mr Blair and his people started to believe their own propaganda. They lost sight of the goal. During those early years of that first government, their knuckles should have been white with nervous tension, their minds and energies focused on a fridge-door list of things to do. They had a huge Commons majority so they didn’t need to be loved at every step along the way: just to stop campaigning and get on with the job. Instead they missed opportunity after opportunity to re-engineer public administration. They spent their time blowing kisses to the electorate; and for a while the electorate blew them back.

Four years later Mr Blair’s Government was re-elected. The majority was only slightly less, but something much bigger than that was haemorrhaging fast. That the Tories now looked even less electable than under John Major perhaps disguised the fact that new Labour’s love affair with Britain was going badly wrong.

By 2005 the whole thing had turned septic. Those of us who rail against Gordon Brown today need to remember the tremendous sense of national disillusion with Mr Blair that drove him from office two years later. You can list, and argue about, the reasons for this. They would include not just the Iraq war, but also the manner in which support for it was manufactured. They would include the politics of spin. They would include Mr Blair’s succession (in his words) of “eye-catching initiatives with which I can be personally associated”, which at first engaged, then began to irritate, and finally infuriated the public.

But in truth (and as Lord Mandelson pointed out in Brighton this week) there hasn’t been much that recent Labour governments have done with which the public has strongly disagreed; and for a good deal of it there has been broad support. Better reasons need to be found for the dislike bordering on hatred that this Government now suffers. Why so sour?

Disappointment is the key. We thought it was all going to be so much bigger, so much braver, so much purer, than this. Anger has been a function not so much of what’s been done, as of the gap between what was done and what was promised. We’re angry with ourselves, too, for being taken in. Barack Obama, watch out.

Great expectations are the bane of modern politics. We are suffering from vision fatigue. One of the reasons for our near pandemic of cynicism and disillusion with the political class has been the way in which, having outsourced their images to marketing quacks, our politicians have been sold a line in vision-speak that guarantees as reliable an immediate hit as a line of cocaine but rots the head. The language is transfigurative. The message is relentless: big dreams and visions, new beginnings, fresh starts and change — always change. And when such wonders are genuinely and realistically contemplated, then rhetoric is matched by action — to the benefit of both. But when (as is so often the case today) the mission is managerial, the change gradual, and the core purpose continuity rather than revolution, vision-speak stales, then putrifies and finally stinks.

Mr Cameron has no plans for a revolution. He and his team have a whole string of good ideas, some small, some substantial, some of which will succeed and others fail. His mission is to nudge Britain, as painlessly as possible but as sharply as he must, back towards more self-help, a healthier spirit of voluntarism, smaller government, enhanced family and community responsibility, an undoctrinaire mix of public and private provision, and — in due time — a more balanced budget and lower taxes.

This is not a bumper sticker. It’s not a conference war cry. It will not make spines tingle. And it will take ages. The slogan in Manchester this week should read: “Yes — or maybe — or to some extent — we can. In due course. But don’t hold your breath.” I’m glad Mr Cameron and George Osborne haven’t sealed the deal. There’s no deal to seal, no new Britain, no promised land. Just the hope of a modest parliamentary majority, then two terms of patient, intelligent, unshowy slog. Now there’s a vision for you.

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