Does David Cameron have the stomach for a fight like Lady Thatcher did? As ever, 2015 will be a national battle, but it will be fought on a remarkably narrow field. Some estimates suggest that the proportion of voters whose ballots actually matter could be as low as 4 per cent. These are the swing voters in the swing seats, the people whose votes will decide the outcome in a few dozen marginal constituencies. In old-fashioned marketing terms, they are C2s and Ds, what used to be called the working class. In the more vivid words of one Cabinet minister, they are "working mothers in Watford and Basildon, factory workers in Macclesfield, supermarket staff in Leeds. These are the people we have to win back. Figures from YouGov's regular tracker poll describe that challenge nicely. For middle-class or ABC 1 voters, the Conservatives and Labour currently tie on around 36 per cent. But among the working class the Conservatives poll barely 22 per cent, against Labour's 48. One senior Conservative MP identifies this as the pivotal issue facing his party. Working-class voters looked at Mrs T and they thought: she's for me, she's on my side, she's doing this for me. Can you imagine working-class voters today looking at David Cameron and saying the same? That's what we're up against. The UK Independence Party (Ukip), incidentally, scoops around 17 per cent of the C2DE vote, well above its 10-point share of the overall electorate. For some contemporary Thatcherites, many of whom have never loved Mr Cameron as they loved the Lady, the answer is clear: turn Right. As The Daily Telegraph reported this week, some in the Cabinet think that Mr Cameron must now "move on" from the modernisation project that began with the explicit intention of distancing the party from its "toxic" history, a history dominated by Lady Thatcher. For them, that means more "red meat" on issues like immigration and welfare in the style of Lady Thatcher, who in 1978 offered voters "the clear prospect of an end to immigration" and in the 1980s launched the first Tory war on Britain's "benefits culture." Both issues loom large in Conservative election planning, and Mr Cameron this month sanctioned a week-long Tory offensive against Labour on welfare cuts, an operation that No 10 considers a great success, after the Opposition wavered over backing those cuts. Conservatives with more subtle memories of Lady Thatcher's governments point out that her success was built not merely on robust Right-wing "wedge" politics aimed at Labour but on a clear vision of a better Britain. No 10 and its friends insist that Mr Cameron is now offering just such a vision, albeit one concealed behind unlovely slogans: Conservatives stand for an "aspiration nation" that is "winning the global race," apparently. "Welfare and immigration are all very well, but what will matter is aspiration," says another Cabinet minister. We have to persuade people that if they work hard they will get ahead, that their children will get ahead and be able to go to a good school, a good university, get a good job and buy a house. In that list, housing is possibly the most important to Tory strategists: building more homes and making them easier to buy may be their greatest political priority. And if Treasury plans to make it easier to raise a deposit end up boosting prices for everyone? Well, the 1980s housing boom didn't hurt Lady T, did it? Another idea receiving some attention in Conservative circles is greater share ownership, an aspiration inspired by the Thatcher-era privatisations that were meant to make owning stakes in public companies an everyday thing. The newly enhanced Conservative policy team in No 10 is expected to start considering the issue soon. For some Conservatives, the real lesson of Lady T is pretty simple, a matter of personality not politics: voters like a leader who leads. As Mr Cameron said yesterday: "Margaret Thatcher knew what was right: she stuck to her guns and saved our country." Yet that analysis contains a challenge for Mr Cameron, whose critics like to dismiss his approach to the premiership as managerial, not visionary. Lady Thatcher's denunciations of her opponents are the stuff of political folklore, especially when she took on her own side. Mr Cameron is happy to lambast Labour, but he can be curiously reticent about displaying his passions closer to home. Take housing. The Prime Minister's anger with those who oppose his planning reforms - including The Daily Telegraph and many of its readers - runs deep. Yet he fights shy of displaying that anger in public. Likewise his Coalition partners: some colleagues yearn for a Thatcher-style condemnation of the dripping wet Lib Dems. Others urge more public warfare against Ukip, an idea under discussion in No 10. Meanwhile, even some of Mr Cameron's Cabinet allies dream of more support from No 10 in their fights with the "vested interests" they face: trade unions, civil servants, the European Union. Any and all of those fights would ruffle feathers, but some think the strife would be worthwhile. "Voters want leaders who stand for something, who take a clear position on something and stick to it, even if they take flak for it," says another minister. I'm not sure they're getting it at the moment. Even Mr Cameron's backers concede he has not always met that standard: the last three years have often seen bold promises followed by rather more timid implementation or - worse - retreat. Some of that is, of course, a consequence of coalition. But whatever the cause, more of the same seems unlikely to go down well with voters or the Tory party. So what will Mr Cameron do? Having this week attempted to wrap himself in Lady Thatcher's mantle, will he show the same firmness his party now cherishes her for? Bluntly, does he have the stomach for the fight? He has barely two years to answer that question. Earlier this year, with his party in a restive, even volatile mood, it appeared almost possible that he might not even have that long. But now, while the task before him remains mountainous, Mr Cameron has less to fear from his colleagues. The mood among Tory MPs is lifting. Some have been cheered by his willingness to go into battle on welfare, and revel in the resultant Labour disarray; others believe that the UK economy is finally about to turn the corner (though one old hand warns against "drinking the Treasury Kool-Aid"). Whatever the reasons Tories are finding to be cheerful, more of them are willing to give Mr Cameron the benefit of the doubt for now. That will ease the pain of what will be miserable results in next month's local elections. One Conservative who has discussed electoral strategy with Mr Cameron in recent days detects a new spirit in him, a rekindling of the optimism that once defined him. "It might be that he's had a good couple of weeks with welfare and the rest, so he's feeling a bit more like himself," that Conservative says. Or it might be that with Margaret gone he feels a shadow has been lifted. Either way, he's looking a lot more up for it than he was.