An e-mail from the Labour party headquarters dropped into party members’ in-boxes across the country on Friday. Jo Brand, the stand-up comedienne, had an urgent message for her comrades.

“Hello, I’m Jo, a Labour supporter and you may have seen me on the telly,” it read. “Have you noticed the big news this week? David Cameron, an old Etonian distantly related to the Queen, has been elected leader of the Conservative party.”

Brand asked members to “dig deep” to help to combat the new threat. “No one seems to know a lot about what Dave actually believes in, but we have a few clues,” she wrote. “We do know that he first emerged as a special adviser to Norman Lamont, standing right behind him on Black Wednesday as Norm was announcing a ‘turbulent day on the markets’, or 15% on interest rates to you and me.”

She wrote that Cameron had voted against the ban on foxhunting, against extra spending on health and schools and had even opposed the winter fuel allowance for pensioners: “He didn’t just support the Tory manifesto earlier this year, with the policies to subsidise private healthcare and private education and the irresponsible focus on immigration, he wrote it.”

It was not her best material. Labour’s scriptwriters are floundering as they look for jibes to throw at the new Conservative leader. Tired taunts about Black Wednesday and the manifesto have not stopped since his victory last week — but with no obvious effect on voters.

As today’s YouGov poll for The Sunday Times shows, Cameron has already had a powerful impact on public perceptions of the Tories, inching the party ahead of Labour for the first time in nearly two years.

Labour seems momentarily stunned, divided on how to tackle the Tory leader. Blairites want to test the new consensus politics that he is offering because they know it could help to secure their man’s legacy. Gordon Brown wants to go on the attack before Cameron gains unstoppable political momentum.

Hilary Armstrong, the Labour chief whip, knows what she would like to do. After humiliating her at his first prime minister’s questions on Wednesday — “the chief whip is shouting like a child . . . have you finished?” — Cameron tried to smooth things over in the lobby. But she would not even engage with him. “You’ll regret that,” she spat.

Will he? The prime minister’s shocked recognition of a dangerous opponent when he, too, was slashed by the newcomer — “I want to talk about the future. You were the future once” — suggests that Cameron will revel in his ability to wound, even as he talks about ending the Commons “Punch and Judy show”.

()There are more testing battles ahead. How will Cameron cope when Labour gets its army into formation and on message to crush the new enemy? He may have drawn blood from a weakened Tony Blair, but is he the man to destroy the chancellor’s dream of a long and happy Brown premiership? What of Cameron’s strategy for the revival of the Conservative party once his present honeymoon is over? Is he going to propose new policies that win over the electorate or does he hope to ride to the rescue after Brown’s economic management is shown up as incompetence? A Cameron aide was explicit yesterday about the agenda: “We’re not fighting Blair. We’re fighting Brown. Everything we do is designed to make him look obstructive and reactionary. Even when Brown tries to be reformist he comes over as a control freak. It’s in his blood. And, unlike Blair, he’s still got a leadership election to win so he can’t be too evangelical about policies that drive many Labour members nuts.”

IN Downing Street last Monday morning a strategy meeting was under way. Leading the discussion were Huw Evans and Conor Ryan, former advisers to David Blunkett, and on the agenda was how Labour would react to the expected announcement the next day of Cameron’s victory in the Tory leadership election.

It was decided that the best action was no action. One person present said: “It was easy, we would let him have his publicity and not react. There would be plenty of time for that.”

That plan soon changed. As the media worked themselves into a frenzy over Cameron and his blooming, pregnant wife, Labour could hold its line no longer.

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