Two opinion polls were published yesterday. An ICM poll in The Sunday Telegraph gave the Conservatives 43 per cent, Labour 36, and the Liberal Democrats 14. On the Rallings and Thrasher guide to calculating the results of a theoretical general election, this would give the Conservatives an overall majority, with 328 seats, Labour 273 and the Lib Dems 14.

Another poll, by BPIX in the Mail on Sunday, gave the Conservatives 41 per cent, Labour 37 and the Lib Dems 11. That would produce a hung Parliament with 295 Conservative seats, 306 Labour and 20 Lib Dem. The two polls, taken together, offer a number of legitimate conclusions. Both show the Conservatives in the critical 40 to 44 per cent zone, in which an overall Conservative majority is a realistic possibility. Both show Labour, which polled 36 per cent in 2005, still in the 35 to 39 per cent zone.

The ICM poll is the first since 1992 to project an overall Conservative majority. That reflects the aftermath of the election that never was. I did not go to the party conferences – they are as bad as Heathrow for security hassle – but many of my colleagues did. From what they say, and from what I saw on television, there was a crucial shift of mood on the Tuesday of the Conservative Party conference. This change of mood occurred in the course of George Osborne’s speech. His carefully planned package of measures, including the reduction in stamp duty for first-time buyers and the £1 million base for inheritance tax, has proved to be very popular. Perhaps that did more than anything else to shift the polls and frighten the Prime Minister off an early election. But it also changed the minds of the journalists.

Before Mr Osborne’s speech, and David Cameron’s excellent speech as leader, Labour ministers were still perceived as the reality and the Shadow ministers as just that, shadows. After Mr Osborne’s speech, the journalists began to realise that the Shadow front bench compared very favourably with the real front bench. The Labour Party conference had itself prepared the way for this. Senior Labour ministers had been allowed only a few minutes each; there were virtually no debates; all attention was focused on Gordon Brown, who made an exceptionally dull speech. The Labour conference in Bournemouth was a jumbled pantomime of Daddy Bear and the Seven Dwarves.

In Blackpool the press discovered a younger and more effective inner group of Shadow ministers, all of whom compared quite favourably with the ministers they are shadowing. The most important comparison is that between David Cameron and Gordon Brown. To start with, the age gap is 41 to 56. It is hard nowadays for politicians to last long into their sixties; Mr Brown has 18 years’ more parliamentary experience than Mr Cameron, but perhaps 15 years’ less parliamentary future.

The two conferences also showed, as did Prime Minister’s Questions last week, that Mr Cameron is a resilient man who rises to the big occasions, while Mr Brown is an angry man who gets all hot and flustered.

There is still some popular belief that Mr Brown is the man to trust in a crisis; to me that seems the opposite of an obvious psychological truth. David Cameron is not only younger, but cooler under fire.

Last week gave Alistair Darling the opportunity to show that he would make at least as capable a Chancellor as George Osborne. He muffed it. Here again, the Shadow Chancellor has youth on his side. Mr Osborne is 36; Mr Darling is 53. Mr Darling’s reform of the capital gains tax was a butcher’s job, with inadequate consultation, oppressive to small businesses, damaging to job creation, as welcome to the farmers as an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Mr Osborne got his proposed reform of inheritance tax right. Mr Darling got his reform of capital gains tax disastrously wrong. It cannot last.

William Hague is the Shadow Foreign Secretary; he is 46, and against the young Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who is 42. Mr Miliband is at his weakest on the European constitution. Mr Hague has both experience and youth. Liam Fox (46) has much more impact as Shadow Defence Secretary than Des Browne (55), who doubles up as Scottish Secretary; he performs neither job well. His combination of roles does not constitute serious government; both defence and Scotland are areas in which Labour is losing its grip.

The Conservatives also have Boris Johnson (43) as their candidate for Mayor of London, and my Times colleague, Michael Gove (40), as the Shadow spokesman on schools. When he was editing these pages, he was young and clever, and he has remained so. There is, of course, also a backing of greater experience on the Conservative front bench. David Davis (58) is more than a match for Jacqui Smith (44), the Home Secretary.

This young group of Cameron, Hague, Osborne, Fox, Gove and Johnson – there are others of promise – are individually more than a match for the Labour ministers they shadow. I find them impressive; they have real political talents; several of them, particularly Mr Gove and Mr Cameron himself, are natural speakers.

They are people of serious political beliefs. They share a liberal-conservatism that reminds me of Keith Joseph and Edward Boyle. Their average age is still only 42; they have the prospect of four full parliaments ahead. I cannot remember a time since the early 1960s when any party had as strong a core of young talents in Parliament.

Karl Marx, who understood how unexpected revolutions can be, compared the process to the one by which water becomes colder, and then suddenly freezes. It changes from liquid to solid. I suspect that the election that never was will prove to have been a political revolution.

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