After a week as dull as that, who would vote for any of them?

I’ve never seen such a subdued Tory conference; even David Cameron looked as if he might drift off. There’s been speculation about Gordon Brown being on antidepressants, but it looked as if Dave had been hitting the mogadon.

This has been a good year for bad speeches. If Cameron’s was a crashing bore; Brown’s was a neurotic wish list; Nick Clegg’s was just a wish – to be prime minister – which won’t be granted. The intellectual content has been minimal, the clichés resounding, the passion almost wholly absent.

You get better oratory at my son’s school debates; more clever phrases in a Christmas cracker; more ideas in the telephone directory. We used to say that British politics had become a choice between tweedledum and tweedledee, but now it has become a contest between dumb and dumber.

But then again, we are told, aren’t we, that dullness is the new excitement. Those clever people who hang around at conferences with sweaty faces from too much coffee, tap their noses and say it is all part of the plan. Politicians are deliberately downbeat so as not to frighten the voters, knowatimean?

Like modern football, the game is no longer about winning, but about not losing, so they play ultra safe. But Cameron was playing so cleverly that he didn’t even merit an appearance on the next morning’s news programmes – the BBC national bulletins led with gas prices. Even the pundits were silenced: well, he hadn’t actually said anything, so there was not a lot to chatter about.

Of course, Cameron did say things in his 57 minutes, but they were mostly clichés and platitudes.

The only time he seemed roused was when he attacked Labour’s record on poverty. Staring manfully into the camera, Dave said he’d take no lectures on inequality from a government that had made the poor poorer. (Not strictly true, because of tax and child benefits, but inequality has certainly risen under Labour). The conference rose as one, as if trying to persuade itself that it was the party of the underprivileged rather than the well heeled.

There were some ruffled feathers on the left of the media at Cameron’s attacks on “big government”, as if he was about to abolish the welfare state. But he wasn’t really – otherwise he wouldn’t have repeated the line about how you can sum up the Cameron political philosophy “in three letters: NHS”. When it comes to government there’s nothing bigger than the National Health Service, which employs 1.5 million people and has a budget approaching £100 billion a year. Most of Cameron’s stated objectives, from tackling climate change to eradicating poverty, will require an active state.

Labour say that while they accept the need to cut public spending, the Tories actually enjoy it.

There’s something in that. Conservatives are ideologically committed to the small state in a way Labour have never been. The debt crisis has given Tories permission to talk about cuts once again, to “starve the beast”. But despite all the talk of hard choices, there was no indication that they are going to do anything other than talk about it. The cuts announced last week only amount to about £7bn out of a total deficit of around £200bn.

The Tory leader tried to argue that the financial crisis was caused by “big government”, which is absurd. It was too little government that gave us the greed and risk culture in the City of London; it was deregulation that allowed them to turn commercial banks into casinos using taxpayers’ money.

Moreover, large parts of the private sector, from pharmaceuticals to cleaning firms, depend on big government for their contracts.

Cameron failed to address the key economic issue of the moment, which is the failure of the banks to lend enough money to keep the recovery going. At least Brown called for an investment bank for industry, though it had the air of tokenism about it. As I recount elsewhere in today’s Sunday Herald, there were signs of intellectual life on the Tory fringe; however, it didn’t make it into this speech.

But look, say Tory insiders, all this economic stuff goes right over people’s heads – you might as well talk about post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory. Elections are about people, personality, image, feel. The Tories say that they are winning what might be called the “human” race.

Certainly, Dave looks and sounds like he comes from the same planet as the rest of us, whereas Gordon clearly hails from somewhere beyond Uranus. Cameron is more pleasing on the eye, more agreeable to listen to and, Tory insiders claim, only needed to deliver two sound bites: one on Afghanistan for The Sun readers, and another on poverty for the rest of us who like to think we care about the poor. Job done.

But is this enough to win the election? Call me old fashioned, but I think voters actually look for more than just someone they would be happy to have a drink with – especially now. And by not commanding the intellectual ground, by failing on the history thing and by appearing just a little flaccid, I think Cameron has missed an opportunity.

When you think on it, quite a lot went wrong last week: the row over Europe reminded us that the party is still divided; inviting a member of a Latvian party which honours the Waffen SS raised questions about Cameron’s judgement; and the plan to fast-track the increase in the retirement age showed that they really don’t care about some of the poorest people in the country. I think the latter may do as much damage, ultimately, as Brown’s 75p pension increase in 2000.

In short, there was still a whiff of the nasty party about last week – despite all the humility. The Tories have received a poll boost, but the voters haven’t been given the clear lead that they were looking for. Everyone is wearing the hair shirt this season, and perhaps it suits the Conservatives better than Labour, but they are all still in denial. On this showing, look out for a hung parliament next May.