Eddie Barnes: The Apprentice

THE novice is getting serious. There is to be no eye-catching attempt to walk around the stage, speaking without notes. This, his advisers say, is a time for lecterns. Nor any schmaltzy plan to get his wife to introduce him on stage.

This time last year David Cameron was fighting for his political life and had to give a theatrical performance to survive. He passed with distinction. This week the Tory leader and Prime Minister Presumptive needs to present a new face to the country: as the man who can be trusted to heal the British economy.

Last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally found a soundbite that worked. "I'm all in favour of apprenticeships. But this is no time for a novice," he declared in a barbed comment aimed at both David Miliband and Cameron. The polls showed movement. Asked who they would prefer to run the economy during the current turbulent times, 30% of the public backed Cameron and his shadow chancellor George Osborne. Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling, meanwhile, won 36%. Another poll showed the gap between Labour and the Tories cut by six points. Up till two weeks ago, the Tory leader appeared to have been coasting to inevitable victory against Brown, having negated the image of the Tories as the "nasty party" with his nice-sounding pledge to "share the proceeds of growth". Now, amid the rubble of HBOS, and with Bradford and Bingley set to become the next victim in the global financial storm, the very idea of "growth" appears a laughable concept.

Proving his reliability on the economy is undoubtedly Cameron's biggest challenge. "The problem for the Conservatives is that the front bench is largely made up by a new breed of professional politicians who know very little about anything except PR and politics," Dr Andrew Hilton, director of the independent think-tank, Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, told the New Statesman this weekend. "The lack of financial experience is a big lacuna. The route now is straight out of Oxford and Cambridge, into PR or political research and, before you know it, they've made it on to the front bench."

So is Brown correct about Team Cameron being too wet behind the ears to be trusted with possible financial apocalypse? Or does Cameron possess the judgment and leadership skills to make up for his lack of his experience? Can he ditch the L-plates?

Forty-one years old, and never a minister, David Cameron has an novel way of dealing with his lack of experience. He takes advice from William Hague. The shadow foreign secretary made a complete hash of the job of leadership when he had his chance in the late Nineties. Just the reason, insists Cameron, counter-intuitively, to value his thoughts: Hague reminds Cameron of the path not to take.

When Brown moved into Number 11 in 1997, Cameron was an executive at a TV company. Labour revel in pointing out that his only real experience of Government was as an adviser to Norman Lamont during the ERM crisis of the early 1990s.

For the coming week, Cameron will have the limelight, and he will have to work hard to make the most of it. On Wednesday, at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, he will stride on to the stage to enjoy the adulation of his party. But in the rapturous applause lies Cameron's deepest fear: that the party's confidence will tip into triumphalism and complacency.

"The deal is not sealed," Cameron has told his MPs about the Conservatives' pact with the general public. One shadow minister declares: "David is very conscious of the fact that he and the party have to earn the right to be the Government. He is absolutely clear that it mustn't be about benefiting from Labour's failure."

For this reason – and with all eyes now focusing on the creaking economy – Cameron is going to inordinate lengths to ensure the Tories are seen as capable.

One of the few Tory figures with genuine business knowledge, David Davis, who was once a senior executive at Tate & Lyle, is now consigned to the back benches. Yesterday, he warned Cameron that leadership was required. "The public at large are not listening to the left versus right, the big versus small state debate," he said. "They're listening for answers to the questions – can I afford my standard of living? Can I keep my job? For the first time in a long time, the answers to these questions might be no, if people get the answers wrong."

The plan to convince the doubters is now taking shape. Cameron will reveal this week that as Prime Minister he would create a new independent financial watchdog which would prevent both the private and public sectors from getting into too much debt. Current public borrowing is set to exceed £100bn this year. Cameron's new watchdog would prevent this from happening. "What we need is external judgment on fiscal policy and we will be setting that out this week," he said in a newspaper interview yesterday.

In the private sector, Cameron says that the Bank of England would be allowed to take over failing banks, and would also monitor consumer and corporate debt. As for his plans on tax and spend, Cameron is not expected this week to sweeten the pill. He is unable to guarantee that taxes won't have to go up. "Our intention is to get control of spending, unlike the current Government," he said yesterday. "Obviously, the higher the debt is, the worse the situation is, the more we will have to say to people: 'Yes, we want to get spending under control. Yes, we want to get your taxes down. But we are facing a very difficult economic situation.'"

Up till recently, when economic growth appeared to be a given, the prevailing Conservative view was simply to prevent Labour's inevitable attacks that a Tory Government would lead to cuts in public services, with a pledge to honour Labour's spending plans, plus a commitment to "share" the proceeds of "growth". The aim was to fight the election on the question of "broken Britain". However, with fundamental questions now being raised about the actual workings of those markets which were expected to create that growth, the game has shifted decisively. Little wonder that there were even calls last week for him to show his seriousness by sacking Osborne and bringing in Ken Clarke as shadow chancellor.

There also remains confusion as to whether Cameron would be as willing as Brown to intervene and rescue banks if they got into trouble. The Tories have to counter Labour accusations that they are the "do nothing" party in the midst of financial chaos. Away from the economy, there is the widely publicised "into-Government" plan being led by Francis Maude, shadow minister for the cabinet office. The conference this week will conclude with a key 45-minute session led by Maude and policy chief Oliver Letwin in which they will "set out the framework within which each Government department would operate and deliver our manifesto".

The session – 'Preparing for Government' – risks a "taking-it-for-granted" attack, but the aim is to get the party in a power-ready frame of mind. Meetings with civil servants, including the Permanent Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, are reputed to have already begun. They will be stepped up include talks with the Scottish Government in Edinburgh.

The policy debate this week is also likely to be stepped up. Shadow ministers say that the criticism that Cameron is PR fluff will ensure that Tory policies will be actively promoted. They include radical plans to give parents the power (in England only) to set up their own schools.

As for his own readiness, Cameron is taking advice from all quarters outside of his cabinet team. He talks regularly to Scottish historian Niall Ferguson on international affairs. His chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, who formerly worked for Paddy Ashdown in the Balkans, is also thought to play an important role in boosting Cameron's contacts with diplomats and army chiefs.

The bar has been set. At the Lib Dem conference two weeks ago, leader Nick Clegg declared that income tax cuts were required to stimulate economic growth and build confidence among consumers. In Scotland, Alex Salmond talks of the need for a "Keynesian reflation" to give a kick-start to the economy. And while Brown failed notably to offer his own prescription last week, few Tories want their own confident leader to be judged by that yard-stick. A clear steer from Cameron on his economic plans will be required – or else he may find that the charge of "the novice" is going to stick.