Tories were on the march in drab north London this morning, shepherded from Edmonton Green station to Bounces Road Community Hall by youthful volunteers wearing "Back Boris" polo shirts and expressions of gawky gaiety that almost took me back to - speak softly now or Dave will hear - Margaret Thatcher's time.
"Not very beautiful round here," I remarked to Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome as we strode along.
"Oh, but it will all change under Mayor Johnson," he replied.
Ah yes: no more tired, pebble-dashed terraces; no more grey skies in the marginal London assembly seat of Enfield and Haringey, which Cameron's party anticipates taking from Labour.
Joking aside, though, there's plenty of quiet confidence. Those youngsters marking our way were but a sample, I was told, of the impressive numbers coming forward to leaflet, hand out stickers, twirl campaign umbrellas. They sign up via the Johnson website. They like Boris; he's fun.
Inside the hall, local councillors and organisers sat in welcoming ranks on the stage. "As you can see," said an activist with close links to London's Poles, "We're not the all-white English party we were before."
And, true enough, there were many shades of face and a turban or two. The place was full. Veteran Hackney Conservative Eric Ollerenshaw was there, a politician well used to opposition in a nearby London borough where Labour rules. There are plenty more Tories who know just how that feels. You could smell their optimism as Ray Lewis, the chief executive of Eastside Young Leaders Academy, stepped up to the microphone.
He is quite short, black, bespectacled, has a firm-but-fair manner and he described the Blond as someone who has "become my friend". Lewis went on: "He's launching his campaign not in a glitzy central-London location ... not in a London that appears in a postcard but a London people live in and experience every single day."
This was behind-enemy-lines stuff, planting the Old Etonian's flag in Red Ken country. The nerve. He talked about kids losing their lives, 27 in London last year, eleven more this year, of whom four came not far from here. "I'm looking for answers, not excuses," he said. "What I'm looking for from Boris Johnson is a commitment to tackle this head on. I see and I hear fresh ideas, and I see energy." Then he introduced "my mate Dave".
It was a clever speech from Cameron. With Lynton Crosby looking on, he likened Johnson to Livingstone, the better to make an unfavourable comparison. Ken had come in on "a tide of optimism as a can-do independent. And, let's be honest, he did some good things." Boris, though, is "as determined as Ken Livingstone but twice as energetic". Meanwhile, the eight-year mayor had atrophied into a Labour establishment figure, and was all the more jaded for it. Londoners should ask themselves: "Do you really want four more years of the same?"
Then the alternative stepped forward, glowing perhaps from the weekend endorsements of two old journalist pals, Max Hastings and Charles Moore. His increasingly familiar new style is to protest his earnestness and deep sincerity, indulging in comedy only in passing. He spoke of the armpits of fellow tube travellers, but also the cost of living and, most of all, the cheapened price of teenage lives.
Contrasting his concern with Livingstone's supposed shrugs of despair, he pledged to match the renewed vigour he'd bring to London's policing with a determination to work with people like Lewis to "supply these kids with boundaries and discipline and to show them how they can turn their lives around and lose the sense that the world is against them and become winners".
We can quarrel about crime statistics, but not with the shudder that runs through a community when yet another teenager is slain. Afterwards, I learned that the latest poll shows Johnson 10 points ahead; down from 12 last week, but not by enough to make his lead look like a mirage. As a package, New Boris is working so far. The question now is will it unravel before polling day.
