I feel as if I¡¯m carrying a shell jewelry wholesale Ming vase across a very slippery floor,¡± a Shadow Cabinet minister told me recently. ¡°I¡¯m terrified I¡¯m the one who¡¯s going to drop it.¡± It was a metaphor first used by Roy Jenkins to describe Tony Blair in the run-up to the 1997 election but it now applies to David Cameron as well, as the country prepares to go to the polls again.

There is a nervousness verging on paranoia in the turquoise jewelry wholesale Tory high command, just as there was in the senior ranks of new Labour in the months leading up to its landslide win 13 years ago. A party that has been out of power for more than a decade is terrified that the smallest error could cause a precious victory to slip between its fingers and gemstone necklace style smash on the House of Commons floor.

Mr Cameron, a leader who made his reputation by showing courage, challenging both his party and the voters¡¯ assumptions about it, now seems hemmed in by caution as he prepares to face the electorate. Fearful of scaring people away by promising to slash the deficit, he insisted that there would be no ¡°swingeing cuts¡± for at least a year if the Tories win power. Anxious about alienating some voters, he has refused to give details of his policy for supporting marriage. Nervous of Labour taunts about ¡°black holes¡±, he hints at lampwork glaze earrings a pledge to avoid the national insurance rise, while failing to make one.

Increasingly, his pronouncements seem designed to grab a headline rather than challenge the status quo ¡ª it¡¯s bash-a-burglar, prison ships and PC-gone-mad, instead of hug-a-hoody, husky sleighs and general wellbeing. He drips out minor policy announcements on broadband and planning laws, while failing to confront a more important issue and force his biggest donor, Lord Ashcroft, to say whether he pays tax in this country.

Meanwhile, like new Labour with its red-rose pagers in the 1990s, Conservative HQ shows growing signs of control-freakery as party managers attempt to contain the message. Frontbenchers must provide a crystal necklace list of all lunches that they have with journalists and are forbidden to do unauthorised interviews. Samantha Cameron is kitted out with a polka-dot dress from M&S, cautious but dull, rather than the black skinny jeans and purple Hunter wellies that she wears along with her tattoo when she is not being a Tory wife.

"People were prepared to pearl pendant pay 40 per cent but the Treasury don't seem to understand what drives people. The minister has at last admitted that the 50 per cent tax rate was a blatantly political measure and not designed to raise new revenues. This is all to do with the politics of envy."

Lord Myners said that there were "very small numbers of akoya pearl necklace people" who appeared to have moved abroad as a result of the tax change.

He justified the change, saying: "It is a matter of meeting the finance requirements at a time when the public sector has a very large deficit. The broadest shoulders must quite rightly bear the greatest burden."

The decision to impose the new 50p rate, announced by Alistair Darling last April, was a watershed moment for a Labour pearl bracelet government that had made it a badge of honour not to increase income tax rates.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, and Lord Myners have both said that they are keen to reduce the 50 per cent top rate of tax once Britain's �178 billion budget deficit has been significantly reduced and the country's finances are put on a more stable cultured pearl jewelry footing.

One Treasury source said: "The Government has always clearly said that the projected yield from the higher rate was based on cautious assumptions and factored in behavioural changes."

From April this year, the change means that any workers earning more than �150,000 a year will be subject to a 50 per cent top level of akoya pearl jewelry income tax. They will also lose their personal allowance once pay hits �100,000. This means that workers earning from about �100,000 to �125,000 will pay an effective tax rate of 60 per cent.

Both Labour and the Tories have indicated that the 50p tax rate could not be reduced immediately because the public finances are so precarious.

The looming introduction of the tax, and the freshwater pearl jewelry old Labour sentiments it arouses, come as Lord Mandelson has won an internal battle to fight the election campaign on a platform of aspiration rather than class war.