Tory papers had fun for months, baiting Cameron. Now there seems to be a hasty change of approach...

It can be confusing to read the Daily Telegraph these days. Until recently, when David Cameron appeared in its pages it was normally in the role of a spineless numpty, a second-rate snake-oil pedlar, a hugger of trees and hoodies, a traitor to conservatism and a certain election loser.

Outfoxed by Gordon Brown and miles behind in the polls, he was the despair of Janet Daley, Jeff Randall, Simon Heffer and all the other big-beast columnists, while the news pages dwelt mercilessly on which group of natural Tory supporters had been the latest to desert him: the retailers, motor manufacturers, entrepreneurs, party agents, Norman Tebbits and so forth. Even worse were the letters: readers were outraged by Cameron's "trendy notions of greener-than-thou", railed that he was a Tory Kinnock who had "completely lost the plot" and swore that they "could not vote for this lot".

And then suddenly, on Friday 28 September, it was all change. In a trice, Cameron was a man redeemed, a true Tory, a leader with vision who had the policies, the style, the nerve and even the money to take on Brown in an election and give him a bloody nose. With remarkable consistency, a line reeled out suggesting that it had simply been a problem of timing: he had always cherished essential Conservative values but it had taken this long to get his policy ducks in a row.

What happened to transform zero into hero, dope into hope? This was before the party conference and before Cameron's speech, so it wasn't that. The catalyst, or so it appeared on the surface, was a single interview given to the paper by George Osborne, the shadow chancellor. He adopted a jolly, upbeat tone, promised not to tax supermarket car parks and short-haul air tickets, dropped hints about easing inheritance tax and let it be known, Gandalf-like, that all had been foreseen and all was going according to plan. "This is more like it," cooed a Telegraph editorial, and so, in one bound, Cameron was free. All previous statements about him were inoperative. He wasn't an idiot or a traitor any more and lo, the stage was set for "the great Conservative fightback".

I exaggerate a little. The old Telegraph editorials were never as hostile to the Tory leader as the columnists (the editor, Will Lewis, has every reason to feel sympathy for Cameron since both are trying to modernise ailing institutions that are in the grip of people over the age of 65). Nor has the bitching about Cameron been completely silenced - how could it be, while Simon Heffer breathes? But it is no exaggeration to say that the change of tone has been dramatic.

And something similar happened at the Daily Mail, where, on the day after Osborne appeared in the Telegraph, Allison Pearson reported on conversations with Cameron at work and at home. Adopting the persona of Worcester Woman, Pearson pestered the Tory leader about what he had to offer her, and after watching him put his children to bed she concluded: "If Worcester Woman could see him now, multi-tasking, would she vote for him? Hell, she might even marry him."

Soon, even the Mail's Melanie Phillips, who only weeks ago was happy to mock what she called the "discombobulated Cameroons", was telling us not to write Cameron off because "he is at his best with his back to the wall". Meanwhile, a Mail leader on the same page dropped a heavy hint that the paper's peculiar romance with Brown was coming to an end.

I am not privy to the policy discussions of the Telegraph or the Mail, but the context for these simultaneous editorial U-turns was eloquent. Labour were ten points ahead in the polls and stretching, and there was suddenly the genuine possibility of a general election: against that background the luxury of Cameron-baiting, which had delivered so much righteous pleasure for so many months, suddenly looked too dangerous to indulge. Playtime was over; it was all hands to the Conservative pump.

Brown may have felt a pang of regret as he watched these developments, but it was always too much for him to hope that the Tory press would go on bashing the Tory leader right up to polling day. He can console himself with the knowledge that these papers have probably already done lasting damage to his rival, and also that in their new guise they must now look muddled and desperate, even to their own readers.

Lead piping
"New suspect in stairwell" (Mirror); "Stolen by people smugglers" (Express); "Maid's kidnap plot" (News of the World); "Is there an al-Qaeda link?" (Sunday Express); "Riddle of the boatman" (Daily Mail); "She is in Morocco" (Express); "Maddie's body kept in fridge" (Sun). Just some of the McCann theories published over one weekend: it is like eavesdropping on reporters playing Cluedo.

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University

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