David Cameron and His Pr Team

Gerald Kaufman describes the difference between government and opposition as follows: "In government, you wake up and say,'What shall I do today?' In opposition, you wake up and say, 'What shall I say today?'" But with the explosion of mass media in the 24-hour information age, a second question has been added: "And what's the picture?" It is not just the old cliche about pictures being worth a thousand words. It is also that with the media so all-pervasive in modern politics, you have to think of ways to use images to communicate messages, and also, frankly, to keep the cameramen and photographers happy so they will get off your back and give you space to do the things that matter.

David Cameron and his team clearly think a lot about pictures. I know that because both he and the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, have told me so. Cameron is pretty relaxed in front of the camera. He has an easy enough rapport with the snappers. On the technical level, some of these pictures are good, some less so. His team clearly thinks most about the ones that coincide with biggish events, which is the right thing to do. So the bike pictures, the dog-sled pictures and the Zac Goldsmith pictures were better prepared and executed than most.

The fundamental weakness underpinning his entire PR operation, however, is lack of political strategy. You can have any number of pictures saying "I am green", but unless you have clear and connecting policy positions to match, they quickly become either forgotten or irritating. I often feel the Tories learned the wrong bits about New Labour. Yes, we thought carefully about presentation, pictures included. But it was the final act, not the first, second, third or fourth. What really mattered was the political and strategic analysis, and the policy positions and the difficult decisions that flowed from it. We spent years working on that, under successive leaders.

I have seen focus-group work suggesting that people know next to nothing about Cameron's policy positions or real beliefs - they have no sense of what he is trying to do with his party, other than beat Labour by seeming to be like Tony Blair. As the country gets to know him, he can get away with a few photocalls and PR stunts. But surely he has learned by now that the pictures are child's play, compared with real politics and real policy. If he hasn't, he will soon enough.