One of the Conservatives' loudest boasts before the Labour Party was restored to respectability in the polls last autumn concerned the strength of the shadow cabinet. Not only did David Cameron, their leader, appear better suited to the premiership than the then-floundering Gordon Brown, but George Osborne, their Treasury spokesman, William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, and others further down the Tory food chain seemed more than a match for their opposite numbers in government.rnMr Brown's bounce may now be receding (a Populus poll on January 13th gave the Conservatives their first double-digit lead since November), but so are those Tory boasts. Indeed, such is the disquiet over the party's failure to land hits on the government in recent months, and to sell its own ideas on dealing with the recession,rnthat a reshuffle is mooted.
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