Over at Pigeon Post, Peter Pigeon has been reviewing "Mind the Gap" by Ferdinand Mount. He detects some of the thrust of Mount's argument, relating to radical proposals to develop land, in recent pronouncements by Cameron:

And, before you ask, yes I am quite sure that Mount is the source of this idea. (He is also the source of the "there is such a thing as society, it is just not the same thing as the state," soundbite). Mount's grandfather in the photograph described above is also Cameron's great-grandfather. The uncle (from whom Mount inherited his baronetcy) is Cameron's maternal grandfather. Blood is thicker than water, and I suspect that we will see some more of Mount's ideas come from the mouth of Cameron. They are about as close to a Big Idea as the Tories get at present.

Mount, it would seem, is somewhat of a Conservative free-thinker, even to the point that he is prepared to countenance that heresy of heresies, Proportional Representation, in the pages of the Daily Telegraph no less:

Labour came to power committed to a referendum on PR. And although Tony Blair cruelly ignored the proposals he had encouraged his mentor Roy Jenkins to draw up, that commitment has been repeated in diluted form in subsequent manifestoes.

What better way to draw attention to the unfairness and to show its new commitment to alliance politics than for the Conservatives to challenge an enfeebled Tony Blair to make good on his pledge? By proclaiming their readiness to work with other parties, the Tories would themselves seem more approachable and could hope to win back voters from those parties. High motives and low politics would coincide.

After his initial honeymoon, Conservative fortunes seem to be returning closer to the 30-33% box that held them captive for most of the last decade or more. It is unlikely that next Thursday's locals will give them the boost they are seeking. An outright Conservative majority in 2009/10 remains one of the less likely outcomes.

Perhaps Cameron will muse over the words of his relative and come up with another carefully-crafted exercise in rebranding the Conervative Party - this time towards a fair voting system and the willingness to share power with others.

Now that would be a Cameron PR exercise to take notice of.