ON THE eve of this week's Conservative Party conference, we suggested John Major needed to launch some blockbusters - dramatic and imagination-grabbing policies that pulled the fat out of the fire for the way-behind Tories. And perhaps he still does.

But it has to be admitted that, so far, he is doing all right doing the opposite.

He is playing the relaxed, unruffled ordinary chap.

The star turn, and perhaps the pivotal point of this crucial pre-election conference week, was Mr Major's 70-minute question-and-answer session.

With its informality and simplicity stressed by the Prime Minister discarding his jacket, it eclipsed the other speakers' policy announcements.

At Bournemouth, where boat-rocking and dissent have been kept under control - largely, it seems, by delegates making it clear they have little time for displays of disunity when an election is looming - it earned him backing for his wait-and-see stance on the controversial single European currency.

But as an image snapshot beamed into millions of homes, its potency was plain.

For there stood plain John Major, man of the people, the just-like-us chap. The not-so-bad-after-all guy you could trust.

Indeed, Tory spin doctors seem to have decided that greyness, not glitter, is Mr Major's biggest asset.

Though not quite the avuncular approach from which Harold Wilson benefited, the style is that of frankness and honesty on a one-to-one level between equals.

It is no surprise, then, that party strategists intend to keep it up - both in terms of the Prime Minister's election platform image and in policy presentation.

For we hear that Mr Major's one-of-the-people manner is to be kept up in the campaign proper with the use the soap box approach that paid off in 1992.

And at Westminster, the steady, uncontroversial course is the one that has also been deliberately mapped out.

For it is disclosed that, with the looming election in mind, ministers have decided to dump contentious and costly measures from the Queen's Speech and concentrate on populist ones instead, with the aim of attracting the votes of the ordinary "hard-working classes."

So out go moves to introduce identity cards and help the elderly with nursing home costs and in come measures to deal with handguns, violent crime, benefit fraud and troublesome children.

Not a blockbuster among them - but, instead, the focus is on the basic concerns of ordinary people and the delivery is down-to-earth.

Will it pay off?

Certainly, it has done John Major and the Tories no harm so far and has kept the troubles under the surface at bay.

The post-conference opinion polls will deliver the first verdict.

But it would seem already that the way-behind Tories have picked up a few points already by displaying the opposite of panic. They are playing it pretty cool.

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