David Cameron has a plan to change the Conservative Party’s image – and rebrand it as the party for working people and social justice.

It’s a remarkably ambitious project, made possible after he unexpectedly won a majority in the General Election.

No longer will he have to put up with Liberal Democrats taking the credit for popular policies, or claiming that they’ve stopped the Tories destroying services or persecuting the poor.

As a majority government, the Tories can now reveal their true colours. And the Prime Minister’s goal is to show us that Conservative colours are not what you might expect.

If he succeeds, it would blunt Labour claims that the Tories are only the party of the rich.

But in a sense, it would be actually be a return to the days of Thatcherism, because Maggie Thatcher (and her successor, John Major) succeeded in winning support from working class people and consigned Labour to opposition for 18 years.

Mr Cameron would also be completing the task of “detoxifying” the Conservative brand, began in opposition.

Apparently, he gets rather prickly when this subject is raised with him. He’s been trying to change the party’s image since becoming leader in 2005, and doesn’t much like being told that he’s a long way from succeeding, according to reports.

Nonetheless, some of his rhetoric suggests he knows the job is only half done.

In his written introduction to the Queen’s Speech, he appeared to concede that during his first term in office, from 2010 to 2015, he failed to ensure that every part of the country benefited from a growing economy and that this had to change.

He did have an excuse, and maybe it was a good one. The Government’s task in its first term was “to rescue our economy from the mire”, he said.

But now, he said, “we have a golden opportunity to renew the idea that working people are backed in this country, to renew the promise to those least fortunate that they will have the opportunity for a brighter future, and to renew the ties that bind every part of our United Kingdom.”

This is what Mr Cameron calls “one nation” politics.

He said that the Queen’s speech was “a clear programme for working people, social justice and bringing our country together – put simply, a One Nation Queen’s Speech from a One Nation Government.”

The idea of one nation Conservatism is associated with Benjamin Disraeli, the Victorian Conservative statesman who became Prime Minister in 1868.

He warned that society risked fracturing into two nations, the rich and the poor, and supported measures to improve the lives of working class people. Today, the one nation tradition continues within the Conservative Party, and Sutton Coldfield MP Andrew Mitchell is Secretary of the One Nation group of Conservative MPs.

The phrase was also briefly co-opted by former Labour leader Ed Miliband, who declared in 2012 that he would lead a “one nation” Labour Party and invited moderate Tories to support him.

Today, the Prime Minister appears to use the phrase to mean two slightly different things.

The first would be familiar to Disraeli. Mr Cameron said his government would “help all working people have security”, in particular by creating jobs.

But the second involves geography rather than wealth or class. For Mr Cameron, “one nation” Conservatism includes ensuring that every part of the country benefits from a growing economy – and nobody is left behind while London roars ahead.

This is how the Government’s plan to devolve powers and control of funding to combined authorities (as long as they are led by a mayor) fit in with the one nation vision.

And it also includes preserving the United Kingdom, by devolving more powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and introducing “English votes for English laws” by ensuring legislation which specifically affects England must be approved by a committee of English MPs before becoming law.

Whether Mr Cameron will succeed in convincing voters that the Conservative Party stands behind every part of the country and every section of society remains to be seen.

Labour MP Jack Dromey, a Shadow Home Office Minister and MP for Birmingham Erdington, insisted: “Talk of one nation is a meaningless mantra for Birmingham... everything the Tories do reeks of unfairness.”

And it’s true that there are more spending cuts on the way, likely to hit councils and police, which some might see as undermining Mr Cameron’s claims.

The Government is also planning some pretty harsh new restrictions on trade unions, making it far harder to organise legal industrial action – arguably shifting the balance of power away from workers and in favour of employers.

But if the Conservatives do succeed in convincing the nation that they are the true party of working people then Labour’s road back to power will become much, much harder.