IT’S all about “priorities”, the Conservative Cabinet minister explained – and, boy, were those priorities crystal clear at the party’s conference this week.

Now those choices may – even more than the state of the NHS, or the public’s clear distrust of Ed Miliband’s leadership abilities – decide the general election next year.

Unmistakeably, it was a week that saw the Conservatives return to solid Thatcherism, with arch Europhobia, harsh benefit cuts and, above all, juicy tax cuts for the better-off.

The Birmingham gathering also saw a further brazen targeting of what economists call the "working poor", while pensioners – who vote in large numbers, of course – escape Scot free.

There was something quite breathtaking about the upfront way that yet more painful cuts in living standards were imposed on many of the poorest people in the country.

It wasn’t just the key announcement – a two-year freeze to working age benefits and tax credits – but a simultaneous £150m bonus for those with big pension pots, effectively an inheritance tax cut.

Incredibly, the Tory press office pumped out cheerleading comments from pensions expert Ros Altmann, who purred that it would help people “pay education fees”.

Even that was trumped yesterday, with the vow to find £1.6bn to ease the pain of people dragged into paying 40p tax, the highest-earning 15 per cent in the country.

In almost the same breath, the Prime Minister acknowledged that a further £25bn of spending cuts must be found over two years, but brushed that off with a simple “it’s doable”.

It’s clear it will only be “doable” with a further assault on local council services, with town halls lined up for more severe grant cuts.

In conversation with me, local government minister Brandon Lewis refused to say they would be “less severe” than the cuts between 2014 and 2016 – which will cost this region a cool £179m.

Make no mistake, there are some Conservatives deeply worried by this abandonment of Mr Cameron’s “modernising” intentions, as the Ukip nightmare keeps the lights on late in No10.

At fringe meetings, I heard speakers warn a Tory majority remains a pipe dream without a fightback in the North, where the party appears, instead, to be in further retreat.

One former Cabinet minister told a national newspaper it was a “terrible mistake to be Ukip-lite”, at the expense of winning over people in the North, ethnic minorities and women.

He said: “The idea that they are going to respond to a diet of immigration, Europe and welfare is complete nonsense. That's just playing to crusty old men in the Home Counties.”

Even The Times – normally a Tory cheerleader – bemoaned that the Chancellor lacked “the courage to do something about pensioner benefits”, while punishing the low-paid.

Lynton Crosby, Mr Cameron’s strategy chief, advises that voters judge the “values” of a party, more than any specific measures. And the Tories are clearly vulnerable on “fairness”.

But these are clever people, in Mr Osborne’s case a Chancellor who has bounced back from policy blunders and “omnishambles” ridicule to growing respect for the recovery.

They will calculate that the public is still behind welfare cuts, that freezes are less toxic that benefits swiped away and that there is a yearning for tax cuts

The general election probably rests on whether this calculation is correct.