William Hague will make hay with the Government's increasingly stilted language and its distance from the way that real people express themselves

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William Hague will make hay with the Government's increasingly stilted language and its distance from the way that real people express themselves.It is true that the Conservatives suffered in the election because they could not articulate a single message. We start listening out for the cliches rather than hearing the words. Why should we encourage that? You can bore the public catatonic and still convey an impression of competence.But the thought-controllers' belief that restricting what backbenchers say amplifies the core message is mistaken Predictability is already beginning to dull the impact. Look at that (expletive deleted) Brian Sedgemore - all over page two of the Sun yesterday, mauling Gordon Brown about the high pound.

The Tories started to go wrong when they lost the plot and gave the impression of being in disagreement with each other. Just before the show started, she disappeared to the Ladies where I found her earnestly studying her bleeper for last-minute guidance. The results were predictable: on handling of the economy, "Avoid the boom and bust of Tory years." When challenged by a Conservative on any inconsistency, "We're not going to take any lessons from the Tories on ..." (fill in as appropriate and quite often as inappropriate). The phrases "We've got to get people off welfare and into work," and "A society for the many not the few," were delivered in that strange sing-song rhythm which comes from saying the same thing too often They might as well go into tele-sales. Turn the sound down on your television when a house-trained Labour backbencher starts speaking and you can finish the sentence for them.Now I'm sure that Alastair Campbell would say that my objections are C-R-A-P New Labour has to get its message across Consistency is all.

Labour used to mock Tory backbenchers who bowed and scraped to Margaret Thatcher But Mr Blair's footsoldiers should be a different breed. Far younger than the Tories, they are, on the whole, well-educated products of a meritocracy and not the result of union-dominated selection On paper, they appear to be an exciting lot. All the sadder that they have become the supine recipients of spin-doctors' orders, as dependent on their pagers for instruction as Linus on his comfort-blanket.Recently, on a talk-show panel, I encountered one of the brightest stars of the 1997 intake. As they read out their model answers, ask the right questions and compile their "homemade" publicity posters in accordance with the guidelines - "You will need a large piece of white card, a thick black marker pen and a photogenic child" - no cliche is left uncliched, no repetition unrecycled. Dull politicians have always relied on verbal props to help them survive the trauma of being asked what they believe. Since they were elected last May, I have watched New Labour backbenchers - people I know to be lively, intelligent and irreverent in private - turn into enfeebled drones. Tony Blair used to urge his supporters to think the unthinkable. Once in Parliament, however, they are are told to shut up until their unthinkables have been cleared in triplicate.