Whether vague-sounding pledges to do battle with bureaucrats will rescue the Conservatives from the doldrums after a rotten few weeks for the Coalition Government and Mr Cameron in particular is doubtful. From the public relations disaster of his ill-timed trip to the Middle East in the company of a clutch of arms salesmen, to the confused reaction to events in Libya and a by-election wipeout in Barnsley (almost much as debacle for the Tories as for the Liberal Democrats), restless Tories are starting to wonder whether, rather than when, they will start to glimpse light at the end of the tunnel. As the local elections approach in May, there is justified fear in Tory ranks that Mr Cameron has failed to sell his message to the electorate, or clearly enunciate what the message is.

The Prime Minister's problem is that his principal catch phrase, the need for a "big society", has not caught on, even with members of his own party, who have as many problems as everyone else in working out what it means. While the public puzzles over whether the big society is just a code word for getting people voluntarily to fill in the holes created in public services by the cuts, unhappiness grows in the Tory rank-and-file over the Prime Minister's failure to throw them political red meat on the kind of issues that they feel most comfortable selling on the doorstep: tough talk on defence, crime, immigration and Europe.

The Barnsley by-election, in which Ukip did better that than the Tories and where the Tories only narrowly beat the BNP, was a warning sign that right-wing voters feel fewer qualms than they once did in deserting the Tory party if they feel that their concerns are being ignored. Mr Cameron's dilemma is that he cannot do much to reassure such real or potential deserters without upsetting his distressed and embattled Liberal Democrat Coalition partners, some of whom would seize on the excuse of a perceived shift to the right to abandon the Government entirely. With Europe and immigration more or less out of bounds, therefore, the Prime Minister is concentrating on the less controversial area of Britain's enterprise culture, this at least being a topic that Tories and Lib Dems can flag up with a degree of unity.

What will define the Coalition's prospects after the spring conference closes is not Mr Cameron's opaque-sounding crusade against red tape, of course, but the substance of the Budget that the Chancellor, George Osborne, is preparing to unveil on 23 March, about which he spoke in Cardiff.

Desperate to throw off a growing perception that the Coalition is all about cuts, Mr Osborne is staking everything on the gain that should follow the pain: the prospect of healthy growth once the deficit comes down and overall confidence in Britain's economy grows. The fact that inflation is running at 4 per cent, way above the level of most pay settlements, doesn't help him much. He has his work cut out in persuading the public that ministers understand what most people are experiencing.

His one ace is that tax receipts in January were higher than expected, giving him a little extra wriggle room as he balances the books. He must use that leeway prudently, either to ease the load on motorists or – a better option – lower the tax burden on the low-paid. If Mr Osborne can hit the right note in the Budget, he might do something to arrest the air of muddle and improvisation that has characterised the Government in its first year, which Mr Cameron has come to exemplify.