Ed Miliband's populism has turned him into the Tories" Red Peril The second problem was the message that, for the country's own good, Mr Osborne was dosing it with the castor oil of Austerity Plus, with all the hurt that would entail. That creed of responsible government, likely to be echoed by Mr Cameron today, was leavened only by holding down fuel duty; a move welcomed by Tory cheerleaders as if Mr Osborne had re-wrought the miracle of the loaves and fishes instead of spending £600 million he does not have. People do not much care if the ruling classes possess posh accents and horsey friends. But to assure those who do not know how they are going to survive the week that they are in for seven more years of pain is a kitemark of out-of-touch government. Wiser Conservatives know as much, which is why Manchester has hosted two conferences. At fringe meetings, MPs and candidates who back Mr Miliband's focus on cost of living talk wistfully of Disraeli's common touch and Macmillan's housing boom. Robert Halfon MP, a proponent of "white van conservatism," told a meeting of the campaign group, Renewal, that his party should be raising the minimum wage, reaching out to trade unions, building many more new homes and applying a cost-of-living test to every Government policy. The pub where Mr Halfon spoke could have been the backdrop to a Labour gathering, and his listeners bore no resemblance to the silver-spoon, born-to-rule Tories. The parliamentary candidates in the audience, fighting tough marginals, were instead born to fail, unless they can change a pattern under which the Conservatives hold only 20 of 124 urban seats in the North and Midlands. These, not party conferences, are the battlegrounds where the 2015 election will be won or lost. Shortly before conference season started, I spent a day on doorsteps with John Denham MP, author of a compelling review on what Labour must do to improve its tally of only 10 seats in the south of England, and Victoria Groulef, the party's candidate for the Tory-held target seat of Reading West. People spoke without exception of their own problems - with schools or job insecurity. Mothers liked the newly opened Little Kingdom day nursery; others wanted more police patrols. Almost no one evinced any political interest or allegiance. If you went back tomorrow, these voters would be unlikely to say how delighted they were that Chris Grayling will stop prisoners watching The Jeremy Kyle Show, or that Iain Duncan Smith is going to crack down harder on the workless. Miss Groulef and Mr Denham know, as do their Conservative equivalents in the north, that the Mondeo men and Worcester Women whom strategists target will be won over only by a party with a concrete offer and a human heart. Recent polling by Lord Ashcroft, showing a 14-point lead for Labour in the 32 most marginal Tory/Labour seats, suggests that Mr Miliband may be in front, but nothing can be assumed in this volatile Parliament. If the focus on the Tory modernisers shifts to grassroots innovators, like Mr Halfon and the excellent Guy Opperman, MP for the Tory outpost of Hexham, then all bets could yet be off. Besides, as Gavin Kelly of the Resolution Foundation points out, the victor is likely to be the leader who can focus both on the decline of living standards and the dire state of the public finances, on which Mr Miliband needs to say much more. None the less, and despite a background almost as rarefied as Mr Cameron's, he has proved the surer judge of the public mood. He has not done so by reading economic tomes or theorising on predatory capitalism (though he spends ample time on both), but by carting his pallet round British markets. Mr Miliband has fielded grievances and eggs, eaten takeaways from street stalls unlikely to be patronised by the (strictly upmarket) burger-munching Chancellor, and taught himself to take the pulse of Britain. Populist leaders of Right or Left instil unease in any entrenched elite - hence the crude media attempts to caricature Mr Farage as a crypto-fascist and the ugly smears against Mr Miliband's dead father. While such slurs cannot remotely be justified by Mr Miliband's past efforts to define himself through his family, it is ironic that the row erupts just as he has finally acquired a public persona. The "weak" Mr Miliband has shifted status from political invertebrate to Red Peril in the Tory caricature while, in voters" minds, he has emerged as the only leader prepared so far to fight their corner. That small triumph is nominally about energy prices and the hardship of those struggling to pay their bills or feed their families. It is also the first sign that benevolent populism offers hope to an electorate empowered by anger against inept government and the Midas classes, for whom public suffering is routinely alchemised to gold. Ed Miliband may be an unlikely Julius Caesar. Even so, he has proved to his conference and to Mr Cameron's alike that the winner of the next election must also be a tribune of the people.