Cameron should look to the future, not to the pasty The Commons has risen for the Easter recess, and the Tory high command is relieved. Especially when the sun shines and temperatures rise, Westminster can become overcooked. That said, it has been a bad ten days: a combination of mistakes, misfortune and press hysteria. The anxieties are not restricted to the over-excitable. Some sensible Tories are unhappy. But this is time for a sense of proportion. In peacetime, our planet has never been more interesting, more unpredictable or more hazardous. Yet for the past week, the British public has been reading about the tax rates on Cornish pasties, some minor tax adjustments for old-age pensioners and the prime minister's dinner table. The fuss over David Cameron's dinner guests was overblown. Everyone believes in an enhanced manufacturing base. So let us welcome Sir Anthony Bamford, the head of JCB. We are all in favour of well-run banks and financial institutions. Three cheers, please, for Henry Angest and Michael Spencer. The proposition that the rich should give something back is universally applauded. Few are giving more back than Michael Hintze. No doubt they all expressed robust views. The prime minister is used to hearing such opinions, from a variety of sources. As ever, he would listen, argue - and make up his mind. He would probably have agreed with much that they said, and why not? These are successful businessmen who want to promote prosperity. If Ed Miliband would prefer the company of trade union leaders who wish to promote strikes and disruption, let him say so. But in politics, rationality is not enough, as we learn from modern British political history. In 1964, Harold Wilson was the heavyweight champion of British politics. His Tory opponent, Alec Douglas-Home, seemed to exemplify everything that was wrong with Britain (the truth was almost the opposite, but that was irrelevant). Even so, Douglas-Home won 43.4 per cent of the votes. Over the next few decades, political demography moved in the Tories" favour. Home-ownership, white-collar jobs, middle-class self-identification: up. Municipal housing, trade union membership. manual labour: down. The Tories should have been virtually impregnable. Yet in the 13 elections since 1964, the Tories have only twice exceeded Douglas-Home's losing percentage. There is a simple explanation. A lot of voters have an ineradicable prejudice. They believe the Tories are the party of the rich, for the rich; the party that ate all the pies. Although Mr Cameron and George Osborne have tried to detoxify their party, their body language is against them. Although they are upper middle class, both men come from hard-working backgrounds. But that is not how the words come out of their mouths. Neither sounds as if he has ever been short of the price of a pasty. So what can the Tories do to get back on course? There are three simple solutions. The first is better politics. Although Mr Cameron is a formidable political operator, this can lure him into the complacent belief that if a problem arises, he will easily solve it. There has been too much government by essay crisis. The PM cannot do it on his own, nor can Mr Osborne. The party needs a new chairman to grip the strategy, sharpen the presentation and act as minister for the Today programme. The second is intellectual courage. Back in the 1980s, it seemed as if some arguments had been won. Margaret Thatcher castigated the politics of envy. She often repeated the point - she was never afraid of repetition - that a country in which no one could grow rich was a country in which everyone would be poor. Today, we need to hear all that again. Mr Cameron should insist that he, too, wants the rich to pay more tax and he should highlight a crucial statistic. In 1979 the top 1 per cent of taxpayers paid more than 25 per cent of all tax. Throughout all the tax-rate cuts of the past 30 years, that figure has hardly varied, but the sums raised have vastly increased. Higher tax rates based on envy will remind the golden geese that they can be migratory birds. The third is calm. Whatever the public think about the rich, the Tories only lose elections when they lose their reputation for economic competence: 1964, 1974 and 1997. Next time, against Ed Miliband, seems unlikely - and the past few days have had one further pro-Tory consequence. There is no longer any danger that Labour will sack Mr Miliband before the next election. To the Tories, that is worth Nicholas Soames's weight in Cornish pasties. The writer is a political commentator