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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well let’s talk about the Conservative party conference now and we’re joined by a couple of journalists, Andrew Rawnsley first of all. There is an awful lot on the plate here for the Conservatives isn’t there, they are going to be a little bit shocked having closed that poll lead down bit by bit over the last few months and it has suddenly widened again and this Help To Buy scheme seems to have been rushed out.

ANDREW RAWNSLEY: Yes, I mean Dermot of course we have to wait until all the conferences are over before we see where the polls settle because parties often get a bounce out of the polling but yes, it’s true, the Conservatives deny they are rattled but they have felt the imperative to try to respond to the agenda set at the Labour conference which was focused very much on living standards. Now you can see this with their rather confused response to the Labour pledge to say the first 20 months of the Labour government there will a price freeze on your energy bills. Now the Conservatives instinctively want to say Red Ed, Socialism, back to the 1970s but they know, and that’s why they are being a bit confused, they know it’s a very, very popular policy. You talk to Labour or Tory pollsters and they’ll say it went off the charts when it was tested at focus groups so they know responding the way they instinctively want to as Tories may not really chime with most voters.

DM: Let me bring in Kirsty Buchanan, a very good morning to you, from the Sunday Express. Do you along with that, I mean it clearly is going to be enormously popular saying we’re going to freeze your energy prices at a time when they seem to be going through the roof and who knows what they’ll be standing at in 2015 to 2017 and that is something that the Conservatives have to address, the idea that they are in touch with ordinary people’s concerns particularly about the cost of living?

KIRSTY BUCHANAN: Sure and I think Andrew’s right, I think they went into a bit of unnecessary flunk about the policy when it was announced but they have their own cost of living policies to promote, obviously there is the council tax freeze, married person’s allowance, there are cost of living issues that they are beginning to address and this election is a bit like Christmas, they seem to be coming earlier and earlier every time around and there is no doubt, we may be 19 months out from an election but there is no doubt we are going to see over this week as we did in Brighton, some sign posts as to what a 2015 election is going to look like. I think there is going to be this Dutch auction if you like between cost of living policies, I’ll see your 20 month energy freeze and I’ll raise you a council tax freeze and Help to Buy.

DM: Well Help to Buy, I just want to concentrate on that. Staying with you Kirsty, they’ve pressed the button on it so to speak now, this far out from a general election you’ve got to be entirely right haven’t you? Whatever they say about there not being a housing bubble, part of the criticism of it last time round was oh, 95% mortgages, why were banks doing that in 2006/07, they were lending irresponsibly and now we are back to those levels again and it won’t be long before we get 100% mortgages.

KIRSTY BUCHANAN: Yes, there is a lot of concern about this and not least amongst Conservatives and core Conservatives. I heard Danny Alexander on your programme a couple of weeks ago saying we are a million miles away – well we are about 50 miles away, I know for a fact, because I am trying to buy a house in Faversham at the moment and as fast as I’m looking at them they are going under offer.

DM: But you get criticised, you see, that’s in the south-east, you can have a housing bubble there but …

KIRSTY BUCHANAN: But you’ve got house prices rising right across now, a national average of about 5%.

ANDREW RAWNSLEY: And there are a lot of Tories who think it is a rather odd thing for a free market party to be doing which is obviously subsidies for the buying of private homes. There is a Tory group called Renewal who will be publishing some proposals tomorrow who think that if the Conservatives are to do better at saying we’re on everybody’s side, we reach out to less affluent voters, we’re not just the party of the rich, for instance they suggest that actually what the Conservatives should be doing is trying to match Labour’s pledge to build a million homes because what you have got in a lot of the country, especially in the south of England and London which are the real hot spots, is a supply problem.

KIRSTY BUCHANAN: That is a good point actually, you are fuelling demand with Help To Buy but without addressing the supply issue.

DM: But then if you do end up building the houses you keep promising to build but never do, but then if you ultimately do then you have effectively sold people a pup. You’ve sold them something at a high price when you are attempting to depress the price by increasing the supply.

ANDREW RAWNSLEY: Yes but at the moment, even on Labour’s promises, we won’t quite match the level of new houses for the nation so I think we are quite some way away from that.

DM: Kirsty, I just wanted to bring you in, the top three from Mrs Bone, the oft-quoted Jennie Bone there who helpfully shared them with us, we have talked about the cost of living and the economy but she said it is also Europe and immigration. If the Conservatives focus on those issues as well will they win an election on that? Are these really the issues or just Peter and Jennie Bone’s issues?

KIRSTY BUCHANAN: It’s a tactical issue as much as anything else. They need to neutralise the UKIP split right vote and you are not going to do that unless you go back to core Conservative policies. So immigration is going to play very big, welfare, the cap on welfare will need to play very big and plays very well on the doorstep and Europe. The problem with Europe that he’s going to have in the run up to the election is that the grassroots Conservatives and significant rump of the party are going to want to know what it is that he wants back from Brussels. They are going to want to see that in the manifesto.

ANDREW RAWNSLEY: They are going to be making their demands and Kirsty touched on it, yes, it is a big strategic … because the Conservatives are not used to the vote on the right being split. I mean we’ve had the vote on the left being split in recent British political history but not the vote on the right but if he goes too far trying to reach out to those UKIP voters or Tories who might be tempted by UKIP on issues like immigration and Europe, he has to worry about repelling more centrist voters, maybe those soft Tories who waver between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. If the Tories go back to what Theresa May once called ‘the nasty party’ he might gain some back on the right flank only to find he’s shedding on the other flank.

DM: We’re running out of time, I just wanted to ask you lastly about this idea, we often raise it, about Leaders’ debates. I used to hear from the Conservatives, great, let’s get Ed Miliband out there, not a lot of people know him, let’s get him out there in front of our maestro David Cameron with all his PR skills and we want to have him in a televised debate before the election so people can go off him. Do you think they feel that way now after that conference performance?

KIRSTY BUCHANAN: I think once the genie is out of the bottle of the Leaders’ Debates it is almost impossible to put it back in again. I don't think there is any way you can have another election and not have a Leaders’ Debates. It depends on the polling, Miliband scores very well and always has done on being in touch with voters concerns but the Prime Minister always scores very well on being strong and on his record of delivery so it is ultimately where we are in 2015, it’s about cost of living and where voters want their Prime Minister to be. Do they want someone who is touch with them or do they want someone who ….

ANDREW RAWNSLEY: Well I and other journalists have been picking up quite a lot of signals for quite a long time that David Cameron is going off the idea of TV debates. It might worry Conservatives a bit because we know Ed Miliband’s poll ratings are pretty poor but if he turns up and can tie his shoelaces and string a sentence together for 90 minutes, we’ve seen this sometimes happen with American candidates in their Presidential debates saying actually this guy isn’t this completely useless character the Conservatives and their newspapers have been talking about, he is worth a lot. I have heard a few Tories worry that maybe we so depressed expectations of Ed Miliband that in a debate he would exceed them.

DM: He could do! Listen, thank you both very much, very good to see you, Kirsty and Andrew there.