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An increasingly confident David Cameron has declared: “This is it.”
With new polls showing the Conservatives on the verge of a return to power, he used the phrase at both the start and end of a speech at a political dinner at the Dorchester.
Mr Cameron normally guards against saying anything that could be construed as taking victory for granted. But his remarks came as research found Labour's traditional solid lead in northern England is in collapse, offering the Conservatives the hope of winning a clear majority of seats.
The Tories have a four-point lead in the North, of 35 per cent to 31 per cent, wiping out the 19-point Labour lead in the region that Tony Blair enjoyed at the 2005 general election.
It represents the biggest swing from Labour to the Conservatives of any region, according to research by the Financial Times.
Although Tory officials admit they are still very weak in the big northern cities, the findings boost hopes that they can win support beyond the South.
“The only reason Labour weren't wiped out in England at the last election was their huge majority in the North,” said analyst Andrew Cooper, founder of polling firm Populus.
An ICM poll this week showed Labour's national support has fallen to 26 per cent, compared with 43 per cent for the Conservatives.
However, Labour point out that Mr Cameron's ratings are well below the 50 per cent-plus level that Tony Blair was at in the months before his 1997 landslide.
Mr Cameron's speech to the Carlton Club dinner on Tuesday night was described by some guests as slick but light on policy commitments. He did not take questions from the audience, which ranged from the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, to nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow.
The Conservatives faced claims that their plans to cut spending could push unemployment to four million or more. Economist David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, said: “The time for cutting public spending is not now, not next year and not the year after.”
He claimed in the New Statesman that with up to a million public sector redundancies, “five million unemployed or more is not inconceivable. They could be our lost generation.”
But shadow chancellor George Osborne stood by his argument that Britain's £175 billion deficit needs to be cut more quickly.
A Tory official said Mr Cameron's phrase was not intended to become a catchphrase like President Barack Obama's “yes we can”. “Don't read too much into it,” she said.
