There is a scenario for next week’s Tory conference in Blackpool which sees the party unite in the face of an imminent election, rally behind David Cameron and defy the media and Labour ministers preparing for a bloodbath.

It is a scenario to which I subscribe. The Conservatives may be in a depressed state, but are they suicidal? On balance, I think the answer is that most of them are not. But Mr Cameron will be living on his nerves for three long conference days and nights before he makes one of the most important speeches of his life on Wednesday.

No doubt he will make a good speech - he usually does - but will the party have imploded before then? Could John Bercow, a Tory liberal, or some other disillusioned MP defect to Labour on the eve of the conference? Will the Tory right keep quiet?

Reading Norman Tebbit’s comments in The Times today makes me wonder whether there really are some elements in the party who would rather maintain the ideological purity of Thatcherism than win an election. It is all so reminiscent of Labour in the 1980s.

Lord Tebbit pours scorn on Mr Cameron - the "public relations guy" - whom he claims has never spent much time in the real world. Gordon Brown, by contrast, is a "clever man" for whom the Chingford Polecat has "considerable regard".

In better times Mr Cameron might actually welcome an attack from Tebbo in the way that Tony Blair used to like being attacked by the unions. It suggests he is actually changing the party.

But in his weakened state, Lord Tebbit is a menace. He also represents a faction in the Tory party which seems to genuinely prefer Gordon Brown’s flag-waving Labour leadership to what they see is the limp-wristed Conservatism offered by Mr Cameron.

If the Tory right (and its cheerleaders in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph) succeed next week they could mortally wound Mr Cameron. But what would their annointed successor - David Davis - inherit? A smouldering ruin of a party coming to terms with its fourth electoral humiliation in a row.

Is that what they really want? Worryingly for Mr Cameron, the answer may be Yes.

It was a most unusual pre-election speech. For the first time I can remember, a party leader addressed his annual conference without even bothering to attack or mock any of his political rivals.

This was Gordon Brown in full "new politics" mode. Since he governs for the whole country, there is no need to even acknowledge the existence of other parties. Neither David Cameron nor the Conservatives (let alone the Liberal Democrats) were mentioned in his Bournemouth speech.

But make no mistake, Mr Brown and his party are ready for an early poll. His discourse on rising aspiration in Britain covered all the ground on which he expects to be fighting an election - health, education, crime.

It was a personal speech, setting out his commitment to public services and "personalising" them for the 21st century. And it was the speech of a politician who looks comfortable in his own skin: the angst of the Brown-Blair feud is now in the past.

His allies say that if there is not an election this autumn, the country will be given their say by the spring of 2008 at the latest. And if you needed any further confirmation, the soundtrack booming out of the Bournemouth PA before Mr Brown’s arrival said it all: Republica’s "Ready to Go".

Can ministers convince business that, after a decade in power, Labour can be the answer to - rather than the cause of - many of employers’ main grievances? The question came to the fore this week when John Hutton, the business secretary, kickstarted a review of small business policy by inviting 20 entrepreneurs to a shindig at Number 11. The government says it plans to hold a series of meetings over the next few months, before setting out a proposed new "framework for entreprise" next year.

The Tories believe this tacit admission that existing policies for smaller firms need to be rethought is a valuable weapon to beat ministers with. Alan Duncan, the shadow business secretary, responded to the Downing Street summit by accusing Labour of having "undermined the UK’s economic success" through high taxes and regulation.

A slam dunk for the opposition? Not necessarily. As Mr Hutton told the FT the Tory attack on the regulatory front has been blunted by the party’s floating of a string of policies - including new employment and environmental laws - that would impose new red tape on business. Mixed messages from David Cameron on his stance on business caused the CBI this summer to wonder aloud whether the opposition leader was a chameleon. The battle for the corporate vote is far from over.

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Has the Northern Rock crisis delivered a serious blow to Gordon Brown’s reputation as the dependable helmsman of Britain’s economy?

On the face of it the answer should be Yes. The sight of queues of panicking savers in the High Street will linger in the memory and the Conservatives have assembled a compelling political line that the whole affair is symptomatic of an unstable economy built on "a mountain of debt".

But privately, senior Tories are doubtful the affair will cause Mr Brown lasting damage. Nobody (apart from the shareholders in Northern Rock) lost money in the affair, and the former Iron Chancellor’s record will need something more spectacular (unemployment and home repossessions, perhaps) to come tumbling down.

Take a look at the Tempus poll in the Times this week and you see another reason why the Tories are still wary of fighting an election on the economy. Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, his chancellor, continue to be far more trusted in difficult economic times than David Cameron and George Osborne, the shadow chancellor.

And there’s another factor. Remember John Major winning an election in 1992 in the teeth of a recession? The public sometimes cling to what they know in times of trouble (the incumbent) rather than take a leap into the unknown.

So even if the economy nosedives (highly unlikely) Mr Cameron may still be fighting the next election on what he calls the "social recession" - an admission that Mr Brown has the economy right but we just don’t feel happier as a society.

Rookie policemen are trained to subdue crowds rather than excite them. Brian Paddick, the former Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner turned candidate for London mayor, clearly learned his lessons well.

Taking the stage for the first time at the Liberal Democrat conference today, the rookie politician reached for buttons that cannot fail to arouse the party faithful. Yet his denunciation of ID cards and the overuse of police stop-and-search powers hardly raised a murmur. The punchlines were there, but the timing and delivery were lacking.

Mr Paddick, who rose to prominence by pioneering a softer police approach to cannabis in a south London borough, will be hoping to do better when he to launches his mayoral campaign later today.

Expectations are high. Lib Dem members in London will vote to choose their mayoral candidate next month. He is almost certain to prevail.

Some Lib Dems see him as their "yellow-knight", a dashing-copper with the public standing to slug it out with the likes of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson in the mayoral race. But if his first attempt at speaking to the party is any clue, the transition from police chief to politician may prove more difficult than his many supporters imagined.