DAVID Cameron made a big speech on Monday. Those of us interested in politics, or at least some news on what a change in Britain’s government might mean, sat up and waited hopefully.

The speech was trailed as the launch of the Conservative manifesto for the forthcoming general election, expected any time between March and June, and I thought this was good – at last we are moving on to issues and policies and away from what schools the politicians went to or how dour or flaccid the premiership hopefuls are.

The media was briefed that the Tories would be putting the economy at the forefront of its campaign and that shadow cabinet members would immediately be descending on marginal constituencies to show how serious the opposition was in winning across the whole of Britain.

Well, the reality was a little different from the spin. David Cameron did not reveal his manifesto, instead he issued a “draft” of what was in fact the first chapter – and no, it was not about the top priority of the state of the economy. He instead covered the NHS and how it was going to not just be safe in Tory hands – but safer, better even.

That the meal and its ingredients did not exactly say what it did on the tin tells us much about the Conservatives and how they are approaching the election – and how they are anticipating Labour and the Liberal Democrats will approach it too.

There’s a lot of shadow boxing going on with every party saying it’s keen to start the campaign but none of them willing to reveal their true intentions.

It is typical of political party spin machines to start talking about an issue such as the economy and how important it is without giving any real detail and then defining the outcome of the economy as how spending on vulnerable areas, such as the NHS, will be protected to point out some differences of approach – while keeping us waiting for the real policies on the economy later.

No doubt with further chapters of the Conservative platform to be spoon-fed at media showpieces, the general election looks like being a long, drawn out campaign, more like what they are used to in the United States. Maybe that explains why Cameron, like Obama, never wears a tie any more. To be serious you have to be casual, apparently, although I don’t buy it.

To back up Cameron’s statement, the leader’s face will appear across the country in posters proclaiming he’ll “cut the deficit, not the NHS” neatly bringing the economy and healthcare together.

Harold Wilson used to prefer a cigar to a pipe – but thought the image of a cigar smoker was wrong for a Labour leader and so made the pipe his trademark. It was all smoke and mirrors.

The fact that on the poster Cameron wears a shirt made for a tie but without a tie tells us he is desperate to be accepted as something he is not, an ordinary casual bloke. Even his serious face looks airbrushed like the 60s model Twiggy posing for M&S.

It is this public relations flaw of trying to manipulate the British public that I think might yet be his undoing. Blair is still fresh enough in the public’s consciousness for it to revile him. Gordon Brown told us he would not be like Blair and yet he increased the scale of the government spin machine and went on spending and borrowing at yet higher levels.

It is this disappointment that Brown was no different from what went before that has eaten into the premier’s political capital and made long-suffering Labour supporters recoil. Cameron should learn from this and be true to himself rather than try to come over as all palsy-walsy with us.

As to policy, well, the reason the NHS has been offered up first is that the Conservatives feel vulnerable in this area. They have learned from Labour and the 1997 election – if Blair could neutralise John Major’s Tories on the economy and other areas where the Tories traditionally had a lead, such as law and order, then it could convince the public that it was trustworthy, no longer the party of Foot, Benn and Kinnock and could thus be given a fresh chance.

Now Cameron is doing the same by trying to say that Labour has damaged the NHS and he can do better. Polling evidence shows the strategy is already working.

The trouble for those of us watching the general election pan out in Scotland is that, since the introduction of a Scottish Parliament, the Conservative policies on the NHS emanating from London really don’t matter too much. Sure, the Scottish Conservatives might say they will do similar things – but with two distinctly separate management structures the priorities are already different and so Cameron’s words are essentially irrelevant.

For instance, policies on maternity provision through the communities? Not in Scotland, after years of rationalisation maternity hospitals that had less than three-thousand births per year (that was essentially all of them) were swallowed up by big general hospitals.

In past years it was important what spending increases, or cuts, were made in the English NHS as these would have an impact on the Barnett Formula and consequently the amount of taxpayers’ money Scotland would have to spend on the NHS (or anything else the parliament decided was its priority).

That importance no longer holds true, for the Westminster Conservatives wish to reform the Barnett Formula and make it a needs-based system – a change that would reduce public spending significantly in Scotland. Any changes to NHS spending are therefore hardly likely to make so much of a difference in future if Cameron comes to power.

If there is a chapter in David Cameron’s manifesto that should interest Scots it must be the one that explains this particular conundrum over how his party intends to rebalance the devolution settlement by changing the funding arrangements for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It is this topic that will have the most impact on Scots daily lives – by comparison, the value of any Tory comment about health, education, policing and housing will be about as tangible as a verbal IOU.

What we had yesterday was the beginnings of a phoney war. It will probably go on like this for the next month or so, with the occasional joust here and skirmish there, most of it outside Scotland. Only when issues such as the economy, defence, foreign relations (including Europe) and our constitutional arrangements are mentioned will it matter. Put your tin hats on and install an Anderson shelter – this could be long, long campaign.

• Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org