THE 8m Britons who tuned in to watch “X-Factor”, a talent show, on November 9th were treated to a contest both lavish and cut-throat. And that was just in the ad breaks—on the weekend in which Britain’s biggest retailers unveiled their Christmas advertising campaigns.

“X-Factor” was the launch-pad for a couple of them: including, most vaunted, a lavish Disney-style cartoon for John Lewis, a posh department store, in which a kind-hearted hare gives its hibernating best friend, a bear, an alarm clock set for Christmas morning. Yet Bagehot found the other, by Asda, more appropriate to modern Britain. It depicted the supermarket as a snowman incorporating 10% more snow than its twiggy-mouthed rivals, a reference to Asda’s promise to beat their prices by that margin. It was simple, vulgar and spoke to the real dread that millions are feeling about Christmas this year. “Cold, innit? Soon be Christmas and I can’t think how I’ll pay for it,” said a checkout girl in your columnist’s local supermarket, Sainsbury’s. Not even shopping at Asda would help her much.

After five years of misery, the British economy is recovering more strongly than anyone dared predict. It is growing at an annualised rate of over 3%, one of the fastest in Europe. More Britons are finding work—close to 180,000 in July to September—and the number claiming benefits is falling. On the face of it, this is vindication for the Tory-led coalition government’s boldest policy, a commitment to disavow Keynesian verities and cut public spending in the midst of a demand slump. It is certainly awkward for the Labour Party, which argued against that pro-cyclical measure. Already less trusted on the economy, because of its own record of pro-cyclicality—loading the country with debt during the good years—the opposition party appears to have been proved wrong on the biggest argument of this parliament.

But Britons are in no mood to congratulate their rulers. A combination of high inflation and lower wage growth has left most of them poorer than they were before the downturn, and correspondingly grumpy. Having briefly closed the poll gap on their Labour rivals over the summer, the Tories are once again trailing, by around eight points.

If the recovery continues, this may pass: the labour market must eventually tighten, wages rise and Britons perk up. It is also possible that, still 18 months from the next election, a partial or faltering recovery suits the Tories best. It allows them to make the fearful claim that returned Barack Obama to power last year: the road is tough, but we’ve made progress, don’t throw it away. A fuller recovery, by contrast, might embolden voters to return to Labour’s more open-handed embrace.

Even so, the Tories could lose the 2015 election—and that would represent an historic shift. Not since 1964 has the party leading on economic competency—then, as now, the Tories—failed to win a general election. And that was chiefly because Labour’s leader, Harold Wilson, was more popular than his Tory rival—an advantage his successor, Ed Miliband, does not enjoy over David Cameron, the unloved yet respected prime minister. Defeat for the Tories in 2015, despite their twin advantages, would accordingly be unprecedented.

It could happen, nonetheless, in part because the recovery is only slowly improving most people’s lives. Britain has in recent years seen wage growth in line with productivity; both are feeble. This guarantees more tough Christmases for millions, more grumpiness and, possibly, a downgrading of competent economic management as the main determinant of British elections.

Mr Miliband has seized upon this as a second chance. Previously he blamed the government for stifling growth; now he accuses it of bringing the wrong sort of growth. He has declared war on the “cost of living crisis”, promising to freeze energy prices for 18 months and to force up the minimum wage that around 5m Britons earn to a “living wage”, up to 40% higher. Perhaps a serious economic policy will emerge from this. For now it is crude populism; to an electorate as bored by politicians as it is contemptuous of them, that is nonetheless titillating. Who would not like higher wages and lower gas bills? Mr Miliband’s gambits also play upon the Tories’ biggest weaknesses—a reputation for being out of touch and for being in cahoots with the big businesses Mr Miliband inveighs against.

Tory in winter; Labour in spring

The Labour leader is not the only populist bidding for votes. Compared with the blandishments of the right-wing UK Independence Party—allegedly including over £100 billion ($160 billion) of unfinanced spending pledges—he looks positively restrained. This is the other structural change hurting the Tories. A product of the same anti-establishment feeling that has spawned protest parties across the West, UKIP is the first non-toxic party to outflank the Tories on the right. If it retains close to the 10% of the vote it is currently polling, it would probably consign the Tories to defeat, no matter how the economy fares. These changes, economic and political, make it harder for sober economic policy to prevail, and that, in the current parlous times, is troubling. The Tories are not impotent bystanders, however: how they respond to this difficulty will also determine its impact.

Initially flustered by Mr Miliband’s grandstanding, they looked about for rival gambits. There was panicked talk of scrapping the green-energy taxes to which Britain is legally bound—as pleasing to the right as Mr Miliband’s business-bashing is to the left. Yet this does them little credit, not least because their economic diagnosis, sober and resented as it may be, is the right one. Falling real wages and inequality are urgent problems, but they cannot be fixed by political fiat, nor without putting the economy onto a stronger footing. Britons may well grumble at that truth. But, history suggests, they may end up accepting it all the same.