With every new poll, such as Tuesday’s Guardian/ICM which put the Tories just four points ahead, comes either a rush of excitement or a cloud of disappointment. The quote that comes to mind again and again is the one from Clockwise: ‘It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.’

It reminds me a little of 1992, when the polls suggested a hung parliament, yet the party of government, with an unelected prime minister, after a decade in power, won a fourth term.. It might be a 1970, when everyone assumed Labour would win. Several front pages were typeset announcing Harold Wilson’s return to No.10. Yet Edward Heath’s Conservatives pulled victory from the jaws of defeat. It doesn’t feel like a 1979 or a 1997, when people embraced a new government with gusto.

Yet no election is the same as another. On the first day of the short campaign, here are my rash predictions for the most unpredictable of elections:

1. Labour must stick to big policy issues, especially securing the recovery, and not try to win a battle of personalities. We must offer a forward-looking set of policies, not a list of achievements. No-one wants to use this election as an opportunity to say ‘thanks’.

2. The pollsters will get it wrong. The obsession with daily trackers and polls of polls is energy-sapping and largely pointless, because the days of the UNS – the Uniform National Swing – are over. The expenses scandal has catalysed the process of voter de-alignment. The general election is an aggregation of specific local elections, with local factors at work, especially where we have excellent young candidates such as Jonny Reynolds, Luciana Berger and Tristram Hunt. Lib Dems will take seats off the Tories. Labour will gain the odd one or two. Labour candidates will buck national trends and win. So national polls will provide little guidance to the actual result.

3. Labour’s campaign will be localised and low-key. Even if we had the cash, we should be running a below-the-radar campaign. The ‘Canteen Campaign’ should be about Gordon Brown meeting small groups of voters, like the bemused shoppers at St Pancras station this lunchtime. No big rallies, please, in Sheffield or anywhere else.

4. Labour will campaign as a team – ‘not a team of one, but one of a team.’ Strength in depth should be Labour’s approach, with Labour’s ‘big three’ – Brown, Darling and Mandelson – at the fore.

5. No ‘expenses scandal’ independent candidate will win. Indeed, it will be a poor night for celebrity independents. That’s life, I suppose.

6. This election will mark the end of spin. You can’t control the media, when the media is controlled by millions of voters. Every day will see an unscripted moment, a gaffe, a verbal clanger, or an amusing viral reaching millions. Imagine Prescott’s punch, or the Sharon Storer moment, but every day of the campaign. Labour needs to roll with the punches, use humour, react fast, and deploy the army of Twitterati to win the war of words. The days of the ‘grid’ are over.

7. The TV debates will be interesting, but not decisive. The media would love to think the highlight of the election is the bit that they are most involved in – the debates. But most people will vote based on their own values, incomes, hopes and fears, not on clever one-liners in the TV debates.

8. The party that wins will be the one which best capture the public’s desire for modernisation. The voters are ambitious and restless for change, starting with their own streets. Labour must let rip with a bold modernising manifesto, packed with eye-catching ideas. If Labour is the authentic party of modernisation, we can win in 30 days’ time.

Photo: Downing St 2010