Martha Kearney's week

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By Martha Kearney Presenter, BBC Radio 4's World at One

Is Harold MacMillan's scathing analysis out of date now?

"More old Estonians than old Etonians."

Harold Macmillan's jibe about Margaret Thatcher's cabinet certainly doesn't apply to David Cameron's inner circle.

That's a line of attack which Gordon Brown has been using at prime minister's questions and an attack on wealth, if not privilege, was an underlying theme for the pre-Budget report this week.

The one-off tax on bankers' bonuses will undoubtedly be popular.

Labour is also hoping that its plans to freeze the inheritance threshold at £325,000 will draw a dividing line with the Conservative plans to lift the limit to £1m.

So will this line of attack be effective? One shadow cabinet member told me it was a just a desperate core vote strategy and compared it to William Hague's ill-fated campaign on Europe in the 2001 election.

"Save the pound" made them feel good and got good write-ups in the Tory press but it did nothing to attract floating voters.

Similarly Labour's "class war" could backfire by turning off aspirational voters.

'Re-branding'

It's also difficult to rally support for the Red Flag when one of the comrades (admittedly a defector from the Conservatives) has tried to claim expenses for repairs to a bell tower.

Gordon Brown's own claim for painting a summer house in the garden doesn't chime with the class war either. What shade was the paint - Clydeside Red?

Clearly the latest round in the expenses debacle will just fuel the public cynicism about politics.

So who will benefit? Or perhaps a better way of putting that is who will suffer least?

The Conservatives know that they have been harmed. As one of Cameron's aides remarked to me drily: "No, duck houses and moats aren't part of our re-branding exercise."

But in the end they believe that sitting MPs will suffer the most, as they are the ones who have submitted the expenses claims.

Labour as the majority party has more of those so will lose more seats.

Austerity strategy

Some too are confident that the Ashcroft money in key marginals is paying off and the Conservatives will do better in the battleground seats than the national polls might suggest.

Nonetheless there is nervousness about the narrowing of the gap over the past month.

David Cameron himself believes that it is vital for his party to stay above 40%.

So why has there been a dip? Another shadow cabinet member conceded to me that, while people are turned off Labour, they aren't sufficiently attracted to the Conservatives.

Other Tory politicians are worried that the party has been too gloomy about the economy and the need for tough spending cuts - the austerity strategy.

But there has been one upside for the Conservatives about Gordon Brown's latest bout of confidence. Those close to David Cameron claim to be delighted.

Why? Because there's now far less chance that his own MPs will mount a challenge against him. That was the only game-changer in town, they think.

Well, I am going back to reading those receipts online again. It's beyond parody - David "Two Brains" Willetts needing the light bulb man again, George Osborne getting his sums wrong, bills for slug pellets and mugs of Horlicks...