In issue 41 of Free Life, which is the official journal of the Libertarian Alliance—and as such quite different from Free Life Commentary, from which it is merely fed—I published an article by Steve Davies, replying to my own articles on the Conservative Party. This is an interesting article, quite different from my own in its analysis and conclusions, and I gladly bring it to the attention of my readers. Its main point is that the success of the modern Conservative Party rested until about 1990 on the unity of a coalition dating from the 1920s. This brought together economic liberals with political and social conservatives. They were brought together and held together by a common fear of socialism at home and abroad. Once this common fear was lifted, the coalition began to drift apart. The liberals went partly to New Labour or into political indifference, and the conservatives since have been unable by themselves to gain enough support for another Conservative Government. On this analysis, the failures of leadership and other personnel are superficial matters—symptoms rather than causes of the Conservative decline.

As said, I do urge my readers to look at this article. However, I do not entirely agree with its analysis. Undoubtedly, the Conservative Party is, and always has been, a coalition of different ideologies. Undoubtedly also, one of the main purposes of the 20^th century coalition was achieved with the defeat of socialism, after which its own reason for being was naturally weakened. Even so, this should not have brought the Conservative Party to its present state of ruin. Anti-socialism was not the only connecting thread. The coalition had many other reasons for being. There could have been a rearrangement of the coalition during the early 1990s, and this could have resisted the challenge of New Labour. Even if it had lost the 1997 general election, it could have made a faster recovery. Certainly, it could now be coasting for an easy victory at the next election. We presently have a Government that is hard at work turning the country into more of a police state than it already is, and that is putting up taxes faster than we can earn more money to pay them. It is handing over control of our domestic affairs to the European Commission, and of our defence and foreign policies to the White House. It would at least be nice to have an alternative to vote for at the next election that was neither utterly useless nor just as bad as the present set of office holders.

All those journalists and politicians who talk about the need to "put the Conservatives back in touch with the electorate", or to "modernise" the Party, are right in their understanding that the old assumptions and tactics that worked so well even for John Major in his early years do not work any more. Where they go wrong, however, is in their conclusion that the Conservatives must make themselves into a more sober imitation of New Labour. Perhaps the most notable advocate of this solution is Tim Hames, who writes for The Times. In a closed meeting a few years back, I heard him develop his argument with considerable force. In brief, he argued that, because the middle classes all nowadays had been to university and travelled abroad, they would not vote Conservative as the Party now defined itself, and that it was therefore necessary to make the Party softer and gentler. Mr Hames has brought round much of the Conservative leadership to his view. Therefore, Theresa May and her funny shoes at the last party conference.

But, while change is needed, this is not the kind of change that is needed. What needs to go is the appeal to a sentiment that is no longer shared or tolerated by large numbers of the middle classes. This is the view that good food stops at meat and two vegetables, that long hair is an abomination for men—let alone jeans for women and nipple rings for both—and that Winston Churchill was a great and good man. Rightly parodied for two generations, these views are in rapid decline; and no electoral appeal based on them can possibly succeed. But this is not at all to say that English conservatism itself is in decline. It has changed, but still exists in undiminished force. The modern conservative is either sympathetic or indifferent to the sexual and other personal habits of others, and decidedly friendly to low taxes and regulations and to a reformulation of the public sector so that it delivers humane but economical standards of service to those who cannot afford to provide for themselves—and uncompromising in rejection of the European Union and in concern over other matters of great national importance. To make these conservatives into Conservative voters, it is a waste of time for the Party leaders to present themselves as cosmopolitan or politically correct. Much better is to return to older traditions of Toryism—to combine economic and social liberalism with a firm defence of the traditional constitution and of national independence. This is the new winning coalition of interests and ideas. Give us a Conservative Party that promises to conserve the ancient but endlessly adaptive order of this country, and all the clever talk of a shrinking Conservative electorate will look as silly as those predictions made in the late 1940s that Japan would never manage an economic recovery.

Principles, however, are not enough. Ideas may be conceived and may reside in some Platonic realm untouched by the business of the world. But to have any impact on the world, they need to be articulated and carried into effect by living men. And the problem in the Conservative Party at the moment is that there are not enough men with sufficient firmness of character for the work that has to be done.

Once or twice, William Hague seemed on the verge of taking up a winning strategy. Early last year, I thought Iain Duncan Smith really had. But though much was promised, nothing was done. In part, this was because the Parliamentary Conservative Party is filled with people who despise principles too much even to see the value of pretending to have any. Others see their interest as saying just enough to excite the remaining faithful without openly confronting the leftist hegemony in our public life—a leftist hegemony that they have in any case accepted, whether from conviction or prudence. The rest are simply weak or stupid or both.

Anyone who insists that the Conservatives must sit down and look hard for the ideas that will, in the 21^st century, reconnect them to the majority of people in this country, is wrong. That has already been done, though by activists outside the leadership, and usually outside the Party. The real problem is one of personnel.

What kind of person is the average Conservative Member of Parliament? He begins as someone of middling intellect and great if vague ambition. At university, he involves himself in Conservative politics, but without clear ideological commitment, and with a strong compensating bias towards making friends with anyone who may be useful for his future advancement. After university, he will get a job either working for a present Member of Parliament—the more senior, the better for him—or employed in some professional or business sinecure. His thoughts will be focussed on getting himself onto the list of acceptable candidates maintained by Central Office. Once on that, he will begin the search for a winnable seat. Most fail, and the luckier failures find themselves stuck for life in jobs they hoped would be temporary. Those who succeed get into Parliament around the age of 40. The average Member has little practical knowledge of the world at large, and very little education as this is commonly defined. He knows nothing of history or literature. Any knowledge of economics and political philosophy he may have will have come from skim reading the pamphlets written by others and put out under his name. If he knows any law, this will be the minimum required to function as the lowest kind of practitioner. What he does know is how to read the mood of whatever meeting he is addressing, and how to imply without making the appropriate commitments, and how to make himself useful or agreeable to those above him, and how, with outwardly unruffled charm and grace, to pull and kick others out of his way as he crawls, hand over hand, up the greasy pole towards what nowadays passes for political success. And it helps, by the way, if he can be a closet homosexual, or have some other scandal in his background that can be used to keep him under control should be ever feel inclined to act against his previously observed character.

A party in office, with a clear agenda and a weak opposition, can afford a parliamentary party made up of such people. Indeed, their pliability will make them worth encouraging. The problem for the Conservative Party is that the machine for producing such people became all-powerful in the 1980s, and they began, by virtue of seniority and by sheer lack of any alternatives, to move into the leadership. This would at any time have been a problem. But it coincided with the disintegration of the coalition described by Steve Davies. What was needed now was a reshaping of politics around new issues and with new electoral coalitions. But this needed imagination and boldness. The Party needed another Disraeli or Baldwin. What it got was John Major and William Hague. These coincident facts explain the whole of the past ten years of electoral decline.

Not every problem has a solution, and this may be one of them. At the moment, several Conservatives are looking complacently at the opinion polls. These show that they are just a point or so behind Labour in the United Kingdom as a whole, and therefore probably quite some way ahead in England. Perhaps this Labour Government is beginning to crumble, and all that must now be done is to be patient. I doubt this. The Government is unpopular over the long term for its handling of public services and taxation. I am not sure the Conservatives have anything different to say about these things: I know that the very radical alternatives are off the agenda. At the moment, it is unpopular for its war policies. But, if anything, the Conservatives are more bellicose still. The rise in Conservative support is not because people are more inclined to trust the Conservatives, but because some people are so maddened by Labour that they will support any opposition, and because many people simply do not know what the Conservatives stand for, but are simply registering discontent in ways that used to benefit the Liberal Party. These are not, I think, the foundations on which a Conservative victory at the next election can be built.

So long as the parliamentary party remains as it is, I am not sure that any recovery is possible. Perhaps a leader will sooner rather than later be chosen who knows what to do. He will shut down Central Office and purge the parliamentary party—thereby allowing the diversity of opinion and character that Conservative strategists talk about without knowing its true meaning or how to deliver it. But short of this, I do not expect to see much in the way of Conservative revival.

Steve Davies and Brian Micklethwait are right when they talk about the slow death of the Conservative Party. They are wrong in their various ways when they claim that the problem is of the same nature that destroyed the Liberal Party after about 1910. The votes are there for the gathering. The shame is that there is no one in place with the imagination or the ability to gather them.