DAVID CAMERON has whipped out of the starting blocks in 2010, labelling this a “year of change”. He is today expected to outline welcome new ideas about how he can increase NHS spending in a period of public cutbacks.

Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke has also had a quick start. Yesterday he said: “When you’re the most indebted country in the Western world...

then you cannot start promising you are not ever going to start increasing taxation.”

Refusing to rule out tax rises is not a gaffe. It is a refreshing statement of the obvious.

Hopefully, the Tories’ next announcement will be that, rather than raise VAT to 20 per cent, they will instead increase the fairer Income Tax.

As ever, Gordon Brown has been left lumbering in the Conservatives’ wake.

With nothing new to announce, he again yesterday was trying to explain away his “playing fields of Eton” jibe as a “Commons joke”.

Yet, without descending into class envy, the backgrounds of the Conservative leadership must be a legitimate line of questioning.

The public are disillusioned by absentee MPs. They want their MP to live in their constituency so he or she can experience local public services and grassroots issues.

But 19 of the 29 Conservative frontbenchers are millionaires. The question is whether such huge wealth immunises them from the concerns of the person on an average £23,000 wage who has no choice but to be totally dependent on the NHS hospital or the local school?

The Echo asked Mr Cameron this question – “can an old Etonian understand Easington”

– on our first encounter with him in November 2005 before he was party leader.

His reply: “What matters is not where you are from but are you a good listener, a fast learner, do you know what needs to be done? I don’t think it’s the background that matters, but where we are all going.”

A fair enough response, which will be only one of a myriad of issues that voters will take into account in this new election year