At least, Gordon Brown’s decision not to call an election has given us back the use of our dining-room table. On Saturday it was still being used as a planning table for the Tory campaign in Somerton & Frome, where our daughter, Annunziata, is the candidate. Her brother Jacob would also have been fighting the adjoining seat of North East Somerset.

Our dining-room table is a large one, designed to allow generous space for children and grandchildren. For the past ten days it has been covered by a large map of the Somerton & Frome constituency, which is an ultra-marginal Liberal Democrat seat. Apart from Somerton and Frome themselves, and charming small towns such as Wincanton, Bruton and Castle Cary, the constituency is spread over 900 square miles of beautiful Somerset countryside, stretching from Farleigh Hungerford in the north east to Beer Crowcombe in the far west. By Friday evening Annunziata had completed her schedule for the three weeks of the campaign, if one were to be called.

As well as giving our family back the use of our table, Mr Brown has done a service to the Conservative campaign by mounting a full-scale dress rehearsal. Everything started to click into place, as it is supposed to do; experienced campaigners were ringing in, leaflets were being put into envelopes. And with the dress rehearsal there was rising confidence. Even on the day that an opinion poll showed an 11-point Labour lead there was the heady feeling that the Conservative activists were about to go into battle. After David Cameron’s speech, the inheritance tax pledge and the improving opinion polls, there was rising enthusiasm that this battle, against the odds, could be won.

For most of the 20th century the Conservatives did, in fact, win most elections. Since Black Wednesday, in September 1992, too many Conservatives have seen themselves as the losing party. They lost by a landslide in 1997, and another landslide in 2001 and by a third, if smaller, landslide in 2005. Even in 2007 they had been having rather a bad summer. There had been an avoidable dispute about grammar schools, Norman Tebbit was growling from his dog basket, and Mr Brown, as a new Prime Minister, was ahead in the polls. After ten years of defeat a certain habit of pessimism had spread.

What no one expected was that Mr Brown would use his considerable skills to orchestrate the recovery of the Conservative Party. It was Mr Brown who started the rumour of an autumn election – not in itself a bad idea. I am fairly sure he could have won an election in July. Time and again he was asked whether he intended to call an early election; time and again he fed the rumour by refusing to deny it.

Then he seemed to have made up his mind. After Labour’s conference, late last month, the polls swung farther towards Labour. Mr Brown’s own speech had been well received, though I thought it was much too boring. Labour advisers were talking in a triumphalist way about the opportunity to defeat Mr Cameron once and for all. Alastair Campbell would never have allowed Labour propaganda to build up the Conservative conference in this way. It was never probable that Mr Cameron would fluff his lines and make a bad speech. I have been a speech writer for one Conservative leader, Anthony Eden in 1956, and have heard ten of them address their party conference. Mr Cameron is the best conference speaker since Winston Churchill retired, and a more natural impromptu speaker than Churchill himself. He is also a much better public speaker than Mr Brown.

Public perceptions tend to have the rhythm of the waltz – one, two, three, one, two, three. The early summer updraught for Labour had left it vulnerable to the downdraught when it came. In the months that Mr Brown was considering an election he should have made allowances for the downdraught. By the beginning of this month he was within hours of the Conservative counterattack. When it came, Labour’s position in the polls was shattered. Apparently, the polls in the marginal seats were particularly bad.

What Mr Brown wanted was a certainty. There are no certainties in politics or in war. Mr Brown had had the luxury of being the chief of staff – admittedly a very disloyal chief of staff – to a gifted field commander, Tony Blair. Mr Blair himself was no Napoleon, nor was he a Frederick the Great, but he was the political equivalent of a brilliant master of momentum – like Guderian or possibly even Rommel.

As a party leader Mr Blair was in the first class, though I am not sure that he was a more gifted leader than Mr Cameron, who should not be tarred with Mr Blair’s political defects merely because he so obviously possesses many of Mr Blair’s political talents. Mr Brown is not like this at all. He is not a gambler, though politics is always a matter of risk and will. He is a copybook staff officer, like the generals defeated by Napoleon.

Some people are questioning whether the election that never happened was an important event. Of course it is. Mr Cameron saw off Mr Brown. It was Mr Brown who blinked first, as he blinked first at his Granita negotiation with Mr Blair. The political weather ahead looks quite rough, as does the economic. Yet the real battle is always the battle of wills.

Polls will go up and down in the future, as they have in the past, but, as Napoleon observed: “In war, three quarters turn on personal morale; the balance of manpower and materials only counts for the remaining quarter.” Or, as Lenin asked: “Who, whom?” Who did it was Cameron; to whom it was done was Brown. He is left looking like the Emperor Galba, of whom Tacitus said that he was “ capax imperii nisi imperasset” – capable of being emperor unless he had reigned.

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