Eighteen years ago, with a week or so to go to the 1992 general election, one or two political journalists, including myself, asked people close to Neil Kinnock how Downing Street would be run under a Labour government, writes John Hipwood.

A few days later on April Fool’s Day, Labour staged its infamous rally in Sheffield when Mr Kinnock bounced onto the stage shouting: “Well, all right! Well, all right!”

It wasn’t the moment that sealed defeat for Labour and victory eight days later for the Tories under John Major, but it was a sign that many people in the opposition party believed they were heading for government.

Wiser heads weren’t so sure, and their answer to our question about the mechanics of a Labour administration was: “Let’s wait and see what happens on April 9.”

Yesterday David Cameron did start talking about what kind of administration he would run, but you can be sure that there won’t be any triumphalist Tory rallies over the next 72 hours. There were some encouraging noises from the Conservative leader about life at No 10 if the Cameron family were occupying the flat upstairs.

First of all, he promised that it would be business from the word go, and he had a warning for the new parliamentarians lining the green benches in the new House of Commons. At the next election there would be fewer of them, and in the meantime their long holidays would be cut back.

A wide-ranging, regularly-meeting war cabinet would be set up “so that we get Afghanistan right”, and then Mr Cameron would start setting a few examples to try to convince the public that they weren’t the only ones taking the nasty medicine.

That would mean pay cuts for ministers.

Even worse for the new intake of MPs, he told Andrew Marr on BBC1: “I want to get rid of those absurd parliamentary holidays so that Parliament works like everybody else does. So if we win the election, there will be a Budget and a Queen’s Speech stretching into July, and Parliament should be back in September getting the work done, instead of this absurd three-month holiday.”

Funny that only a few MPs thought it was absurd until now.

And what sort of ship would he be captain of at No 10? “The style of government I aspire to is one of quiet effectiveness. I think we have run government over the last 13 years as a sort of branch of the entertainment industry. It’s been 24-hour news and 24-hour government.”

Mr Cameron was at pains to stress that he wasn’t taking anything for granted, and that the remaining days of the campaign would be “very, very intense”.

IF he makes it to No 10, he insisted that he wouldn’t have people in the office “shouting at the headlines”. Well, we’ll come back and check on that promise . . .