John McTernan: Route-map for the middle classes

IN A gruelling war it is best not to open a second front. However, the coalition has confirmed that it fancies a war on three fronts. Having decided to take £1,000 a year from the poorest claimants, it then signalled that it felt a similar sum should come from people with disabilities.

Having myself tried and failed to take a few pounds a week from lone-parent benefits, as a special adviser to the then Secretary of State for Social Security, Harriet Harman, I muttered: "That's brave, minister."

Now the middle classes are in the firing lines. Higher-rate taxpayers are to lose child benefit. Or more accurately, households in which there is a higher-rate taxpayer will have their taxes increased to claw back the value of the payment. There's a wrinkle in here - hardly any women who receive child benefit pay the higher rate of tax. When you have children, it's still the pattern that women stop work or go part-time and the male partner works more hours to balance out the household income. So for those men it'll be a straightforward tax increase. Apparently it's fair because only one in seven are higher-rate tax payers. The thing is, the top 15 per cent already contribute more than half of all income tax. It's not at all clear that they have a burning desire to pay 1,000 a year more in tax.

The middle classes are the soft underbelly of the coalition. Over the summer they were rhetorically pummelled by Nick Clegg, who signalled that success in social mobility will be to have fewer middle-class students at university, an odd ambition for an MP representing the only middle-class part of Sheffield. That's why Ed Miliband chose to signal so clearly to the "squeezed middle". Over the next few months, David Cameron should be worried about Miliband's ability to speak to this group of voters. Miliband's language may be cheesy - "come off it", "I get it" - but if voters agree that he "feels their pain", then that will be a problem for the coalition.

This is the first priority of the Prime Minister's speech to Tory conference. Not to speak for England, but to speak to middle England. The coalition has dominated the airwaves since mid-May, but picking through what they have said it's genuinely hard to find a message that consistently connects with middle-class households.

It's not just the threat to "middle-class welfare". It's the possibility that debt for students will rise to 80,000 if fees rise - though not for the poorest. And there's the real rub, so anxious are Cameron, Clegg and George Osborne to prove that they are "progressive" not only their rhetoric but also their actions target the mainstream middle.No 10's fear? That if Ed Miliband is ruthless enough to take out his brother on the way to the top, he will barely break sweat in running to the centre to reclaim middle England.

The PM's task, therefore, in his speech tomorrow is to renew that bond with the people he peeled away from New Labour. And the first step is to fight back against the pessimist label Ed Miliband tried to pin to him. He has a real problem here. To prepare the ground for the cuts, Cameron has let the government machinery imply that horrible, horrible things have to happen. This is understandable - lowering expectations is a key skill on governing. But there's a feeling that the coalition have overshot. They have so compellingly sketched a difficult future that they are in danger of depressing the electorate.

In this light opinion poll details are interesting. The public backs the coalition's approach to cutting the deficit - but they think the cuts have already happened. They ain't seen nothing yet. With Ed Miliband audaciously saying to Cameron "you were an optimist once", the Prime Minister needs to find a way to bring hope back into his speech.

This means going back to basics. Cameron found his route back to the centre ground by going green. "Hug a husky" was cute, obvious and mockable - but it worked because it cut through. Now, it's time to find a narrative in which green politics again speaks to the future. The key is "green growth". The coalition desperately needs a growth narrative, otherwise the counterpoint to all its actions will be a cry from the opposition that it's all at the cost of economic growth.

Already the independent Office of Budget Responsibility forecast is for two million unemployed in 2015 - the time of the next election, if this is a fixed-term parliament as intended. Jobs, jobs, jobs could be a powerful drumbeat over the next four years. So it is urgent for Cameron to provide the country with a credible growth narrative.

That is, of course, the final challenge. It is Cameron's first conference speech as Prime Minister. There will be pressure to explain to the Conservative Party why the election was lost (it was) but why the post-election was won, in forming the coalition. And there will be a temptation to reassure the base of the party that its core Conservative philosophy has not been betrayed.

The easy way out is to denounce Ed Miliband as Red Ed - to make him a hate figure people can unite round by attacking. That would be a schoolboy error. First, you don't reclaim the mantle of optimism while being relentlessly negative - brands succeed when language and actions are consonant.

Second: never, ever frame your opponent before you believe it will stick. You have one chance to stick a label on an enemy. If it works, great. If it doesn't, the next label you try is so much harder to sell to the public - each different attack diminishes in power.Cameron should remember that neither Bambi (weak) or Demon Eyes (secret lefty) worked against Tony Blair. And he should reflect that too much time spent on your opponent when you have just won an election shows that you're worried.

This is a tough speech for Cameron. He will already know the shape of the Comprehensive Spending Review. He has to trust his cabinet ministers - from both parties - to get the detail and the handling right. But he, and he alone, crafts the overarching narrative. His speech is not just an explanation of the necessary choices, it is an argument for the rightness of those choices. It is a sketch of the promised land - and a route-map there.

It's the second hardest job in politics to deliver the PM's speech to conference. But Cameron has an advantage - he's already done the worst, delivering the Leader of the Opposition's speech to conference.