New year, new Dave. The man was bursting with a frantic and almost hysterical energy yesterday as he marked the beginning of 2009 with what can only be called a Dave blitz.

Perhaps he felt media-deprived over the holiday period. Perhaps Gordon Brown's gibe that the Tories are the “do nothing” party has hit home. Yesterday David Cameron was a “do something, do angry” leader.

I woke up to Dave on the Today programme and he sounded like a man who'd been up since 4am working himself up into an absolute fury. He began by announcing that Britain's “landscape” was “terrifying”. Groggily I wondered what John Constable would make of that. What would Hay Wain Horror! actually look like?

Dave, who has been working on his word emphasis over the holidays, left no time for contemplation. “I feel like SHAKING the Prime Minister sometimes and saying: 'LOOK, what don't you get?'. It's a credit crunch! That's what needs to be addressed! Stop WASTING our money with cutting VAT. So get with the programme!”

Get with the programme? How about get off the programme? I didn't like the image of Dave shaking Gordon (all those flapping jowls, very dangerous to passers-by). I yearned for the 8am pips followed by all that soothing news from Gaza. But, no, Dave now continued to foam (I do hope he's had his rabies vaccine) about the VAT cut. “The Government might as well have gone out and BURNT the money. It was a CRIMINAL waste of money!”

At the word “CRIMINAL” I fled from my radio. There is only so much Unhappy New Year talk you can take before breakfast. I really don't think that Captain Crunch and the credit crunch mix well.

But I suspect we must get used to this in 2009. It's going to be a politics-from-dawn-to-dusk type of year. Sure enough, by lunch yesterday Dave had reinflated his outrage enough to make a speech on the economy at St Stephen's Club in Westminster.

The photographers gathered on the pavement to snap Dave walking in with the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne. Both looked incredibly pasty-faced. The Tories must have a “no tan” edict. Everyone must look as if they only have enough money to spend their holidays freezing to death in Britain. Dave was wearing a brown suede coat that shouted “Oxfordshire country walks”.

He spoke from a lectern of sustainable wood plastered with the Tories' new slogan: Now For Change. I examined it and wondered what it could mean. Surely that should be Change For Now. Or, even, For Now Change. Or, perhaps, Have Any Change Now?

Dave strode forward, pasty face now flushed red (could be the cold though don't discount anger on a secret drip-feed). “Happy new year!” he said. “I am reliably informed this is the most depressing day of the year. As my wife said this morning, only you could think you could cheer people up by making a speech.”

Cheer people up? Is that what he's trying to do? The speech was a cocktail of anger and hyperactivity. There are tax cuts for savers, cash for businesses, high-speed broadband in every home.

My mind wandered. I was deep into devising anagrams of “Now for Change” when Dave suddenly announced he had a vision. Oh dear. How very Obama.

“It's an economy where government and its citizens live within their means, save for a rainy day, waste not and want not,” he said. It's all about something called “ethical capitalism”. Hmmm. It's going to be a very long year.

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