Do the Tory party know what they are up against?

Ben Brogan, a loyal Tory supporter, sums up with deadly accuracy the dire state of the Tory party’s pre-election campaign:

The most startling thing, to my mind, has been the way Team Dave has let itself be kicked around daily by Labour. It’s as if they don’t have a dog in this fight, as if they have walked off the battlefield sniffling because – sob – those tewwible bullies are too wough. The best defence is a good offence, as Vince Lombardi used to say (or was it Yogi Berra?), but offence we have had none. The Tory communications machine has not been, well, communicating. Instead it has let itself be bitch slapped by Peter Mandelson, including this morning in the Guardian.

He concludes:

I’ve said it before but the cemeteries are full of people who have underestimated Gordon Brown. Like the Terminator reduced to grabbling bits of metal, he is still coming for you Dave. And what cheers him? The kind of self-satisfied complacency shown by Ed ‘Friend of Dave’ Vaizey. Another week gone and the best the Tories can do on a Sunday is suggest Sam Cam votes Labour. Nice. Team Dave needs to snap out of it and get stuck in.

Communications, or the lack it, are just the icing on the cake.  Without a strategy and bullet proof policies the Tory party’s campaign will fail.

One more time.  Labour has a Rolls Royce election machine that is just purring away at present.  Mandelson and Alastair Campbell have been here before and they are in the business of winning.

What they are about is going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.

Perhaps, as Ben Brogan suggests, the Tories are not up for the fight.