proposition to the electorate. If that is the basis of the message, the machinery is also being put in place to deliver it. The 40/40 target seats plan , which aims to hold the forty most vulnerable Conservative-held constituencies and win at least forty more -- enough for an overall majority -- is well thought-out and deliverable, with new campaign managers dedicated to the operation. This work can build on the experience of the 2010 target seats campaign, which delivered a net gain of 23 Tory seats over and above what would have been achieved with a uniform national swing. There is also the opportunity to learn from mistakes. One of these was to confuse or even contradict the consistently positive local message delivered over two or three years with an opaque and often negative national campaign. Research should not be ignored, as it too often was (though not by the target seats team). We should also look again at the place of televised debates. Ideally these would include only the two serious candidates to be Prime Minister. If this cannot be agreed, the party should consider whether the disruption to the campaign -- in terms of preparation time and the potential for nasty surprises -- makes taking part worthwhile. Finally we need to ensure we do not repeat the errors of campaign organisation that were perpetrated last time. As Janan Ganesh correctly notes in his biography of George Osborne ( which I reviewed in Saturday's Guardian ), one of