Just ask Tory MPs what they hope/expect on May 5. Most would echo Michael Howard’s remark about wiping the smile off Tony Blair’s face. Leaving aside the small revolutionary defeatist tendency who want their party to be routed again before it can be reborn, many Tory MPs will be relieved if they gain 40 seats, a common forecast. This would represent a rise of a quarter, to move above 200.

Tory MPs would, however, be delighted/startled if their party got up to 220 or so. Add on perhaps 70 Liberal Democrats (the consenus projection) and 30 nationalists and Northern Ireland MPs, and Labour would be around the break-even point where it would lose its overall Commons majority. This would probably mean the end of Mr Blair, and the beginning of the end of the Labour Government. That is the top end of even the most bullish Tories’ hopes, and beyond even the best polls for Mr Howard.

Such an outcome, remote though it still looks, would lead to Tory celebrations. But look at it another way. If the Tories had about 220 MPs after the election, they would still be 100 short of an overall majority. That would be a big mountain to climb, underlining the party’s strategic dilemma that no one yet wants to address.

Parallels are often drawn with 1987 and Baroness Thatcher’s third-term victory. On one side, Mr Blair is less well-placed than she was then. Labour starts the campaign six to seven points lower than the Tories in 1987. But politics is not a simple trade between the two main parties. Mr Blair’s vulnerabilities do not translate into victory for the Tories.

In 1987, Labour was in a battle for second place with the SDP-Liberal Alliance, though it did not like admitting this publicly. And while the Alliance had 23 per cent of the vote, it remained a marginal force in the Commons with just 22 MPs. So, although Labour won 229 MPs then, and 271 in 1992, it could realistically hope for an eventual victory on its own.

But, now, the Tories have to cope with a much larger party which stands in the way of an outright win. Thirty of the 54 Lib Dem MPs won their seats from the Tories in 1997 and 2001. Hardly anyone expects more than half a dozen seats at the very most to move back again. And the Lib Dems still hope to win a few more from the Tories. Unless, and until, the Tories reverse most of these Lib Dem gains, they will find it very hard to win a majority on their own — not least because they barely have a presence in most of the big cities and industrial areas, or outside England.

None of this means that the Conservatives will always be in opposition or will be overtaken by the Lib Dems. Far from it. The Lib Dems are likely to remain a third force, albeit a significant one, for the foreseeable future. And the Tories seem to be on the way back.

But the Tories face a conflict between their short-term and their long-term ambitions. Mr Howard, and Lynton Crosby, his campaign guru, are understandably concentrating on the former. Their dog-whistle strategy (misnamed since we can all hear the whistle) is intended to mobilise core and target voters in a limited number of key constituencies. The Tories can point to the rise in their poll ratings to just above their long-term range. That is not a breakthrough. Nor does it mean a neck-and-neck race. But Tory MPs leave today for the campaign in much better heart than they expected a few weeks ago.

However, the latest Populus poll for The Times shows the limits of this strategy. Revealingly, the Tories have mainly gained among working-class voters, not among professionals and managers. Despite their focusing on eye-catching areas such as school discipline and superbugs, Labour remains well ahead on most of the public service issues that are of greatest importance to voters. Public concern about crime has fallen in the past two months, while there has been no change in the ranking of immigration and asylum. Moreover, the Tories have only marginally improved their lead over Labour on the latter, and the two parties remain level pegging on crime and taxes. Labour has a runaway lead on managing the economy, and voters are still optimistic about the economic outlook. Hence, the importance of Gordon Brown to the Labour campaign, as shown again yesterday.

But the Howard Flight affair shows how the Tories remain vulnerable on public services. Mr Howard’s excessive reaction, ending Mr Flight’s career for a smaller indiscretion than committed by many other MPs, is because the Tories continue to be suspected of having a hidden policy agenda.

There is a limit to what dog-whistle strategy can do. It can take the Tories up to the mid-30s, and the start of a recovery. This is obviously welcome after the past three elections. But I doubt if it can do much more. Indeed, the current populism may set a ceiling to Tory ambitions. Paradoxically, the strategy of the Tory traditionalists may, by limiting the party’s appeal, require an alliance with the Lib Dems for a return to power. So the modernisers’ approach may offer the greater hope of winning back the type of voters whom Mr Blair and the Lib Dems captured in 1997, and thus increase the chances for the Tories of gaining power on their own. That will be the central post-election battle. Meanwhile, Mr Howard is preparing not for power, but for ending “the smirking politics of Mr Blair”. But Mr Blair was still smiling yesterday, just.

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