Jeremy Hunt twinkles like a little star. He is handsome, clever, caring, eligible and blushes like a choirboy, the ideal husband if you’re looking, though there is the small matter of a Chinese girlfriend. The Charterhouse-educated son of an admiral, he is the natural winner of popularity contests, the biggest of which he will be entering in about 18 months’ time. Have you got a clue who I’m talking about?

Actually, he is the shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport, and, at 41, the new Conservatism’s perfect mascot. He is too good to be true, but then so is David Cameron’s lead in the polls, which has propelled his team from political Siberia to a half-decent waiting room.

Cameron and his shadow cabinet, who are trying to dazzle conference in Birmingham today, are now a serious proposition. We know about the poster boy with the Paul Smith suits and the Barbour weekends. But what about the others? Electors vote on policy and leader appeal – a presidential beauty contest – only anoraks and political junkies actually compare individual shadow ministers against their government numbers. Would Jeremy Hunt be better than Andy Burnham at finessing the 2012 Olympics? Who knows? Does anyone really care?

Constitutionally, HM Opposition’s task is to savage the government while saying as little as possible about their own policy plans (reveal them too early and the best ones will be pinched, the rest roundly trashed). But it’s the presentation, the impression, that counts; Cameron’s team are his curates on Earth. Are they filling you with hope of freshness, competence and change?

Forget all the fawning Dave tributes for a moment, and the pretender’s unfailing confidence, swooping into Georgia to offer his support like the great statesman in waiting: these are triple election losers, with little improvement between polls. They are politicians reared on dismal failure, who need to win seats from both Labour and the Lib Dems – and even nationalists in Scotland – in a victory that needs to be as big as Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide or Attlee’s 1945 triumph.

It’s a topsy-turvy world in the land of the top Tories. Suddenly the morose, introspective Tory underdogs are the happiest, friendliest, bounciest (and that includes roly-poly Eric Pickles) politicians you have ever met. They are wired with optimism, so buoyant with the 20-point poll lead that even love for Margaret Thatcher (for some years in opposition a forbidden passion) comes bursting forth in Mills & Boon declarations. Their lucky break came when Gordon Brown failed to grasp an early election; they have acquired a yummy, chummy leader, seen Boris enthroned, won Henley, then Crewe and Nantwich, watched Labour being trounced by the SNP at Glasgow East. I asked the hyper-happy housing spokesman, Grant Shapps, if his cheeriness was the result of having survived two near-death experiences – a car crash that left him in a coma and a diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, now cured – or his party’s revival. Neither, he says: he was always this chipper.

At a friend’s wedding I ask a group of mothers if they can name any members of the shadow cabinet: they look at me blankly. Someone mentions William Hague, another David Davis: “But he went… didn’t he?” I try names on them: Shapps, Hunt, Warsi, Pickles, Grayling, Lansley? Never heard of them.

But Cameron’s disciples might soon be running the great departments of state, pulling levers with drastic consequences, sending men to war, cutting services or overseeing a land of prosperity and happiness, a commodity they have – like displaced rulers of Bhutan – pledged to sprinkle over our sad workaholic lives. Three years ago Michael Gove was tossing around bright ideas on politics and culture as a star Times journalist. Now he’s shadow schools secretary. Why on earth would we trust him with our children’s education? He nods in grave agreement. “Yes, if you get it wrong, it’s not just a case of ‘Terribly sorry!’ You’ve ruined the chances of a generation.”

) ) ) ) )

It started with a list. When I knew I was to be writing about members of the shadow cabinet, I noted their 30 names on a piece of paper, each marked “P” for possible, “D” for definite and some, alas, “CF” for can’t face. This last benighted group included Alan Duncan, Liam Fox, William Hague, Theresa May, Francis Maude, Oliver Letwin. Nothing personal, you understand, but they all seemed too marked with the stamp of the past. Some, like Hague, are performing better than ever, but they are politicians of habit, who once expounded a different form of Conservatism from the palatable confection slick Dave is peddling, who would have been equally at home with Michael Howard as leader or, even better, Lady T. For fresh consumer appeal, Cameron must rely on his newer appointments – winners in his 2007 reshuffle; the ones who can finally convince us that the party has rediscovered its heart without losing its head.

Can we imagine them in power? Some, maybe. Andrew Lansley, having lived and learnt through the mistakes of serial health ministers, can probably run their department in his sleep. So far the women have made the impact of a snowflake. The shadow transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, I’m told, is media-shy, but has nice clothes that featured in Vogue (so not that media-shy, then); Cheryl Gillan has Wales; Caroline Spelman is rumoured to be on her way out after Nannygate. Justine Greening and Maria Miller are juniors on track for promotion, but there are no larger-than-life household names, no Mo Mowlams or Clare Shorts among them, and no venerable elders in the style of Margaret Beckett.

Cameron has been lucky in picking his team. With his poll lead and his party popularity, he hasn’t been forced, like poor John Major, to make a selection based on maintaining party discipline. His ranks suffer no divisions to mirror Maggie’s wets-versus-dries. They are all socially damp, economically rightish, moderate patriots, and while the future of the Lisbon treaty hovers uncertainly, and helpfully, offstage, they show every sign of keeping the peace.

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