Famous for its top girls' boarding school and a racecourse beloved of preposterously hatted blue-bloods, Cheltenham is the kind of town where the recession seems a small war in a distant country. The timing of the Conservatives' recent spring conference there was as congenial as its setting: at most 13 months remain before a general election that, judging by the polls (see chart), will end the Tories' prolonged absence from power. Yet the flatness of the jamboree, where activists were subdued, party staff glad to be absent and the speeches of ministers-in-waiting mostly leaden, almost drove observers to check that they had come to the right place.
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