The political establishment in Dublin is facing the fact that a ‘business angel’ from the Irish version of Dragons’ Den is leading the polls as the people of Ireland prepare to elect a new president tomorrow.

The race helps us understand why Ireland elected a centre right-Labour coalition at the start of the year.  And, with allegations of an attempted assassination, a quick diversion to consider the merits of classical pederasty, and a former terrorist leader entering the contest, the 2011 Irish presidential campaign has also provided a gripping diversion from IMF austerity packages.

“Put a queen back” in change
Candidates have clamoured to take on the mantle of the anti-politician politician. The early front runner was an independent senator who made history in 1993 by forcing the political establishment to decriminalise homosexuality.

In many ways an unlikely People’s President, David Norris is a Protestant out of the Southern Unionist mould. He once quipped that his campaign slogan would be ”put a queen back in the lodge”, a reference to the former vice-regal lodge which is now the official residence of the Irish president.

However, Norris haemorrhaged support when he failed to draw a clear enough distinction in people’s minds between his (largely academic) interest in pederasty and paedophilia.

The terminal blow was the publication of letters in which Norris appealed for clemency to an Israeli court which had convicted a former boyfriend of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian male.

‘Attempted assassination’

At the other end of the spectrum, but every bit as colourful, is Dana, ultra-conservative Catholic and sometime MEP and Eurovision winner.

The most recent twist in her chaotic and emotional presidential bid was a tyre blow-out in her battle-Peugeot, which her husband (and driver) feared was an attempted assassination.  An initial police investigation has ruled this out, but Dana continues to generate huge entertainment value.

Another Mary

Ireland has had a president answering to the name Mary for almost 21 years. Mary Davis, Special Olympics organiser and self-styled do-gooder, had the political parties rattled with her bid to extend the Maryfest by another seven years.

However, she was quickly revealed to be a ‘Quango Queen’, boasting several state appointments which had more than the whiff of political cronyism. Any lingering hope that Davis could present herself as detached from the elite which brought Ireland to economic ruin was dashed when she was forced to admit omitting from her CV the membership of a bank’s board.

Politically toxic
Other than one of the Marys – Mary Robinson – Ireland has always had a president backed by Fianna Fail. It is a remarkable measure of the Fianna Fail leadership’s view of the party’s toxicity that, after much internal wrangling, it was decided not to field a candidate.

It is a bit like Ed Miliband declaring Labour won’t contest the London mayoral election because of the mess the party made of the economy. It is more like the Communist Party of China saying it will take a break from politics.

In its weakened state, Fianna Fail has a deep fear of being usurped by Sinn Fein. And no sooner had Fianna Fail pulled out of the contest than Martin McGuinness announced he would run.

Northern interloper

Taking leave of absence from his post as “joint First Minister” of Northern Ireland, McGuinness came south presenting himself as the ultimate political outsider. This is a phoney persona that he has struggled to carry off when faced with questions about the jobs his administration is cutting and the A&E departments it is closing.

His campaign lost considerable momentum when he was confronted in a shopping centre by the son of an Irish soldier murdered by the IRA the terrorist organisation which McGuiness admits playing a leading role in.

Nevertheless, in the absence of an official Fianna Fail candidate, it is hard to see how McGuinness won’t capture some of that party’s vote.

Punishing politicians

However, Fianna Fail can be allowed a chuckle at the misfortune of the candidate from the main governing party, Fine Gael.

Despite an ambitious programme of austerity measures, FG is riding high in the polls on 36 per cent.  However, its presidential candidate, Gay Mitchell, is languishing on 6 per cent. He comes across every inch the politician’s politician and is being punished for his patronising politicians-know-best style.

More than anything else, the Irish electorate is keen to hurt any candidate who can’t present themselves as angry with the political establishment.  The resounding General Election victory achieved by Fine Gael and Labour was more about punishing Fianna Fail, the incumbent politicians, than it was about positively endorsing the policies of the winning parties.

Now the FG candidate is feeling some of that anti-politics anger which is mainly directed at Fianna Fail, but which includes anyone seen as representing the political elite.

Commode

Mitchell did provide one of the more bizarre moments of the campaign when the automaton malfunctioned and – quite incredibly – he appeared to tell an interviewer, with no little anger, that he would like to empty a commode on him.

Mitchell told the presenter: “I know where I’d like to dump that commode you were talking about.” Unable to conceal his anger, he then went on to berate the TV host and audience for what he felt was a lack of high-brow questions for high-brow political brains.

Dragons’ Den

After running scared from the fight, Fianna Fail must also be taking some pleasure from the fact that Sean Gallagher, of Dragons’ Den fame, is leading the opinion polls.

A former member of the Fianna Fail national executive, with businesses that rode the wave of Ireland’s construction bubble, Gallagher is firmly from the Fianna Fail gene pool and makes an unlikely independent, let alone the leading one.

Perhaps this tells us that Fianna Fail is not as toxic as many people had perceived.  More likely, what his lead tells us is that Gallagher has benefitted from being able to style himself as a grassroots grafter.  He was a foot soldier, more interested in community activism than national politics, his argument goes.

Premature payout

The Dragons’ Den man has been seen as the only non-professional politician who can beat the retired Labour minister that some bookies premature paid out on, Michael D Higgins.

The payout was premature because with just days to go, Gallagher was polling a seemingly unassailable 40 per cent compared to 25 per cent for the second-placed Higgins. However, it is a measure of the volatility of the Irish electorate that Higgins could yet overturn that sizable lead.

Poet politician

Michael D, as he is affectionately known, is a retired arts minister and academic who wastes no opportunity to remind people that it was he who introduced tax breaks for the Irish film industry.

The 70-year-old, who has published three volumes of poetry, knows his task has been to float above party politics and try not to get dragged into an undignified dogfight.  This he has done with mixed success.  With a demeanour more like an academic than a politician, Higgins somehow appears to resemble a rather sanctimonious geriatric Womble.

He has the demeanour of a man who believes it is his right to be president.  Like it would be doing the Irish people a favour.  Higgins referred in a debate this week to the presidency: “to which I hope and expect to be elected if the people do their job”.

Money in envelopes

So will the people do their job, defy the polls, overcome their instincts and elect a retired politician as president?

Of course no Irish election is complete without a controversy about money in envelopes. Gallagher’s remarkable rise to the top of the polls has brought with it increased scrutiny. This week Martin McGuinness, of all people, interrogated Gallagher about his links with a convicted fuel smuggler.

Gallagher, it is alleged, visited the smuggler’s premises to collect an envelope containing a £5,000 donation to Fianna Fail. Gallagher’s recollection of this apparent meeting has been inconsistent at best.

A retired politician could yet win

The Irish people are now asking themselves if they really want a president with unanswered questions. Unanswered questions about accepting political donations from a convicted criminal which seem to prove a strong link to the former masters of the political class, Fianna Fail, are enough to slay the most popular of celebrities.

An upset could still be in the cards. A retired politician could yet win.

Eoghan Williams has written widely on Irish affairs, including for the Sunday Independent

Actually it’s more than that. Firstly, in reality, even I have several email accounts and they are impossible to all link up into one place. Secondly and more substantively, if it’s true that the conversations were about Conference plans they theoretically shouldn’t have been on departmental email accounts anyway. But thirdly – and this is the most important point for me – it is ridiculous that there is this division between government and political work.

What departments do is, by definition, political. They are trying to enact their policies, giving information, helping their various interested parties to make choices, encouraging the success of their ministers. Even something as straightforward as arranging for some filming to be done for a conference video is, in part, about promoting the government’s policies.

I have argued before that there isn’t enough political bottom in today’s government. Most SpAds I know spend a majority of their time dealing with the day to day demands of the media and so don’t have enough time to do the longer-term political job they are supposed to do. They spend vast amounts of time trying to keep on top of huge numbers of cc-ed emails from officials. And – of course – they are a small number in relation to the size of the civil service.
Whether or not you agree with the argument that the civil service as a body is an active enemy of change (on balance, I probably don’t. I suspect the real reason for much of the perceived reluctance to change is partly that change in big organisations is always difficult, partly that people often feel that they’ve seen these demands before and they ‘know’ that they won’t work), it’s not a sustainable way for any government to operate.

So is it time for us to reassess the way government works? Is it time to admit, as is the case, that pretty much everything that our elected representatives do to discuss, promote and enact their policies IS political and see if there’s a better way to make change happen? Is it time for the full spectrum (the top layers anyway) of government to be politically appointed?

Dramatic stuff, but really?

Tory leadership hopeful, Murdo Fraser’s proposal is, as I understand, to return to a state of affairs which existed in the period pre 1965, where there was a separate and independent Scots centre right party which sat in coalition with the Tories in Westminster – a settlement that delivered the UK a Scots Unionist PM as late as 1963. It is a proposal that deserves to be discussed without the injection of hysteria that we see from some quarters.

The reality is that the game has changed irrevocably, we face the very real prospect of the break up of Britain and this is not helped by a Scottish Conservative Party that is underperforming at almost every electoral level. This state of affairs, together with the almost total collapse of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and a demoralised Scots Labour party means that Alex Salmond and the resurgent SNP can strut around the Scottish political scene like the Collosus of Rhodes – unchallenged and undaunted.

I imagine that Murdo Fraser’s call for a new party is as much about recognising that the centre right party in Scotland needs to speak, not to the Tory heartlands of South East England, but with a distinct Scottish voice.

An independent Scottish centre right party sitting as part of the UK Conservative group at Westminster might be able to speak to Scotland in a much more nuanced way and it could challenge and even oppose individual policies crafted in London or elsewhere which might have disasterous electoral consequences in Scotland in a manner that is more possible than in the context of the current state of affairs, which inevitably imposes a certain UK disciplinary straitjacket on the rare occasions this is an issue. It is surely worth a thoughtful debate.

Furthermore, the SNP would no longer be able to levy the rather easy and inaccurate accusation that the party of the Scottish centre right was in some way, English controlled.

Across Scotland, the SNP has steadily gained and then held ground in seats that David Cameron desparately needs to win back if a UK Conservative alliance is to govern with a majority.

The SNP campaigns with a number of faces – they are one thing when facing down the Labour party in the West Coast of Scotland, quite another when facing down the Tory threat in the North and East of Scotland where they pose as small ‘c’ conservatives and defenders of the defence community. Some may sneer at the intellectual inconsistency of the SNP, but the strategy works in that they get away with it.

I was a Conservative candidate in the neighbouring seat to Murdo Fraser in the 2001 election where we both challenged Nationalists.

Murdo is a talented campaigner and understands the SNP narrative.

In my own campaign, I believe that the 6.7 per cent swing we secured against the SNP was achieved in part because we campaigned on a wholly local platform – rejecting Tory election material which was designed to fight the Labour party in the West Coast of Scotland and taking the fight to the SNP in the North East. One size does not fit all even across Scotland.

Even the most peripheral analysis of the Scottish electoral map reveals that the Scots’ Tories have some of their best hopes of electoral success in SNP held seats.

The threat is not the same as in the South. In Angus the Conservatives are, for example, currently in coalition with (amongst others) the Labour party – not a situation that is likely to be easily replicated where I live in London.

Murdo is an excellent candidate for the party leadership and I know that he cares passionately for Scotland’s place within the Union. Murdo has further outlined important policies for the debate on the Union’s future that lie ahead.

The real risk to the Union in more general terms is to do nothing or pretend that a defence of the status quo is somehow ‘Unionist’. Out of hand rejections of any sort of debate on these issues is politically naive as the ‘do nothing’ approach leaves the door wide open for the SNP to continue to exploit the current state of our unhappy and uneasy devolution settlement in order to deliver the Union’s demise.

The present asymmetrical devolution is broken, the SNP are in the ascendancy. A revived centre right force in Scotland could play its part in reversing Unionism’s decline. Murdo’s proposal deserves a fair hearing and it is a good thing he has started a real debate.

Marcus Booth is an Executive Member of the Society of Conservative Lawyers and a founder of Stronger United.

Whether the government actively seeks ideas – such as when it sought extra pairs of eyes to pick over Gordon Brown’s last Budget, or when the e-petitions site worked – or whether citizens proactively submit them (for example, all the hundreds of people who write to Ministers and MPs every day) shouldn’t matter. But I suspect it does, because if the government is asking for opinions and ideas, it means it is actively thinking about the issue, and as we all know if a government doesn’t have to think about something, it tries not to.

The supermarket answer? Well, it tracks, monitors and – crucially – crunches enormous amounts of data – how people use its site, what they buy, the times and places they have their order delivered. But also, it recently sent out a survey asking what its customers thought – of the delivery process, the check out process, the contents of the online shop, the call centre, the drivers, the food itself once delivered… and anything else we fancied telling them.

Is there a lesson there for the government? Yes there is. The government has stacks and stacks of data. Some of it is pointless, some of it is unusable, some of it is immensely valuable and, in the right hands, can provide valuable insights. And sometimes, the government doesn’t understand how we use public services – so it should ask. Politicians can’t improve things if we don’t tell them how.

The second supermarket insight is that they then sent a follow-up email with some of the suggestions made during their survey, saying that some things would be implemented, some would be looked into and some weren’t currently possible. I was actually quite surprised to get this email (entitled “You spoke. We listened.”)  I don’t think I have ever had any information back after taking a survey. It was a pleasant surprise, and quite interesting to see what other people had suggested.

And the lesson for the government? If you’re going to attempt to engage, it can’t be a one-off. In fact, I’d say that this needs to start small… So perhaps, given the CCHQ members survey that went out last week, they should ensure that everyone gets a summary of the responses to that and any actions that will be taken as a result. Then next time there is a crowd-sourcing exercise, they should at least email a thank you to everyone, and hopefully a summary of suggestions and what will be done (if anything).

Government and public service is not – or shouldn’t be – a consumer-type exercise. It’s about far more than that. But its most basic expression should be accountability to those who pay the bills – and that means governments need to think as if they really do have competitors snapping at their heels all the time.

This movement is seeking to create a “Purple Book” in an effort to articulate its vision and is part of an attempt to woo back the Liberal Democrats. Sylvester states that “in fact it is possible to see scope for a new Lib-Lab alliance, grown out of the liberal Centre rather than the social democratic left”.

This is a possibility. But I think that the article – and the Westminster village – is ignoring how closely the Purple Book and the ‘Red Tory’ or Centrist Conservatives are starting to align.

The Purple Book will, the article says, focus on some common themes such as the “role of government and decentralisation” – decentralisation, of course, is one of the most radical parts of the Tory modernisers’ project. It will also talk about the “need to move away from reliance on a big State and redistribute power to individuals and communities” – again, that’s sounding familiar…

The truth is that the Blue Labour/Purple Book agenda and the Red Tory/Centrist Conservative agenda are converging very rapidly.

Both move beyond the legacy of Thatcher and the rampant free market fundamentalism/individualism which it represented. Both reject the Fabianism of the Blair years which embraced managerialist government with its targets, centralisation and command/control politics.

Both sides are converging (more so than the Liberal Democrats, who despite last week’s setbacks are wedded far too much to the special interests of local government) on the idea of breaking politics out of the traditional shackles of elections, parties and formal democratic institutions and directly empowering citizens, communities and their chosen organisations – whether they be charities, voluntary groups, social enterprises, co-operatives or unions.

In hushed voices you can sometimes hear modernisers speak of Cameron’s grand project to break the Liberal Democrats in two – bringing the “liberal” Orange Bookers into the fold and leaving the old “Labour-leaning” wing of the Party floating back into irrelevance. This is a bold strategy, but why stop there?

The really grand strategy would be to break the Labour Party in two. Divorce the centrist “Blairite” wing of the party (read – the electorally successful part) from the “Old Labour” wing.

This would give the Modernising Project the broad, centrist base that it has always wanted and needs if it is going to win future elections. Cameron used to call himself the “heir to Blair” and much of his success has been convincing voters who supported Blair to support him instead. So he should be focusing on generating intellectual links with the Purple Bookers in order to make his claim reality.

Sure, there is a great deal of partisanship, decades of prejudice, myth-making and suspicion, and this might take years to achieve – but this would be a true re-alignment of politics.

The Big Society will require decades to fully embed itself and needs years of electoral success – we need the broadest coalition possible. Orange Bookers, Purple Bookers and Centrist Tories – working together. This could be the future of British politics.

Ever since the early 1990s and the victory of Blair, it has been the Conservatives who have been on the intellectual back foot. Finally, Cameron & Co have given the Tories the intellectual advantage. The Labour Party from David Miliband to Jon Cruddas can see that the Big Society is a fantastic opportunity to build a new democracy and a new economy. “Blue Labour”/ Purple Bookers/New Labour – they all want to get in on the act – but fortunately for Conservatives, we currently hold the high ground.

So let’s at least starting trying to co-opt them in the early stages of the project, while Ed Miliband continues to dither.

If successful, it could see a radical centrist Government in power for the long term and give us the chance to build the new kind of Britain that we all want to see.

I’m going to leave aside the Lib Dems for now, apart from to say that their presence in government as responsible partners is the thing that may rescue them in 2015.

But for the Tories, the discussion cemented my belief that stopping talking about why we had changed in 2008 went some way to explaining why we didn’t win outright last year (though I also underline that the task was immense), and that there are problems ahead if we do not start pushing it again.

I’m probably showing my age here, but remember this passage in Bridget Jones’ diary:

“If I voted Tory I’d be a social outcast. It would be like turning up at Cafe Rouge on a horse with a pack of beagles and Charles and Camilla in tow or having dinner parties on shiny tables with side plates… Labour stands for the principle of sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela, as opposed to braying bossy men … going to the Ritz in Paris then telling all the presenters off on the Today programme.”

That’s what we’re up against. I’ve talked before about a group of friends, who are all classic target voters for the Tories, not one of whom will vote for us, ‘because we remember what you did in the 80s’.

There are two dangers for the Tories in today’s politics. The first we can’t do much about – we are being forced to do things that we don’t necessarily want to (though I would argue that part of being a Conservative is wanting to ensure that we have balanced budgets, a sustainable economy and that people control their own lives). But quite apart from that, as I’ve mentioned before, the perception that the Lib Dems are the only thing stopping us from slashing and burning is being allowed to take hold. It is simply untrue but there is a long-term problem – if we don’t stand up and take ownership of the many progressive and socially-good things the government is doing, we run the risk of allowing that ridiculous caricature to become even more entrenched.

There is always a difficulty in that governments tend to focus on the governing, and on the short-term; the party, on the other hand, can and should take up the challenge of how to ensure that in the long-term, voters can see that this has been a responsible, careful and caring government which they want to see re-elected.

Strangely, in the last few days, I’ve talked several times about the way the A-list was handled in 2006. Just to recap – when David Cameron was elected leader, he introduced a top 100 (ish – I think there were more than that) of more diverse candidates who we as a party thought were our brightest and best. We would require constituencies to select from the top candidates to ensure that more women and minority candidates were selected, and to ensure that we got the best people into the most winnable seats.

Let’s leave aside whether or not it should have been done, that’s not why I mention it. I think in setting up a top candidates list, we should have been proud to make it public, and to promote those candidates in the media and locally as our top people who we thought would be great MPs. But for some still misty reason, it was decided that we would not be allowed to confirm or deny who was on that list. Internally we argued against it; but someone somewhere decided not to – I still don’t know who, but more importantly I still don’t know why. It was almost immediately made public anyway, and CCHQ was on the backfoot, defending against accusations of double-standards.

In more recent times, I was very impressed by the Lib Dems’ way of approving the initial Coalition Agreement – they had an internal MPs’ meeting, a Federal Policy Committee meeting, and a special conference of members, all of which approved the Agreement resoundingly. We as Conservatives had none of that. I’ve argued before that the Lib Dem process has given a great deal of cover to their leadership, and that we should have had something – yes, it probably would have ended up as a bit of a Built to Last/Pravda-like nodding through, but it would still have given a seal of approval.

I’ve written before about how I think that the AV referendum (whatever you think of the merits of the argument) is addressing the wrong problems in our democracy, and about how I would very much like the great ideas of Douglas Carswell et al on open primaries and recalls to be properly implemented.

This weekend in Cardiff I talked with four others, all of whom I would describe as being on the liberal end of the party, about recent political events (rather than governing and policy). Even amongst us, we disagreed 3 to 2 on whether we should have put up a Coalition candidates in the two recent by-elections (for the record, again, I think we should have done).

The real problem is the lack of openness on the part of the Party in all of these situations. I don’t think it’s necessarily a wilful desire to trick people; I think it might just be that institutionally, the party hasn’t yet caught up properly with the public mood and demand for transparency and accountability. I think as a government, we’re talking a great game on transparency and local control and so on, and I think that Francis Maude’s Cabinet Office is delivering. But I worry that we might not be quite there internally – which for the sake of politics really should change.

This post is not about Andy Coulson, who I never worked for and who I think we all should feel some sympathy for this evening.

It is about what kind of communications the government should do.

I’ve occasionally been critical over the years of how the Conservatives have presented their policies. I’ve been critical also of how badly prepared they seem to have been once in government. Those reasons again: firstly, there was a disconnect between the substance of policies and how they were presented (that did improve somewhat with time, but was replaced instead by swift rowing back from agreed proposals at the slightest hint of criticism).

Secondly, there doesn’t appear to have been a serious attempt to make a coherent case for government policy.

Thirdly, even when there has been outrage and riots, what comms there were were not strong enough, nor positive enough, and always seemed to be about defence not attack.

And finally, there is no overall narrative for what the government is doing – no attempt to hang everything together based on devolving power and control.

So what should the Prime Minister look for in his next comms chief? Obviously, he needs someone he personally feels comfortable with and trusts.

Crucially, though, he needs someone who is sufficiently in tune with and understanding of his agenda to go out and really sell it to the media and thence to the public, but is also strong enough to point out flaws, inconsistencies and potential bear-traps.

I don’t pretend that the job is easy, nor that the person chosen will necessarily get it right all the time – we’re all human. And that person will – as Fraser Nelson points out – have a hideous time of it. But it has to be done. Because while – of course – the most important part of being in government is indeed governing in the national interest, it is also vitally important that voters understand and support what is being done.

Nick is right that not everyone who criticises the Conservative campaign in Oldham is ‘right-wing’ – many of us think it seemed lacklustre. Why it was lacklustre is for another day.

He’s also right that this is not about left or right. It’s about the dilemma between what Conservatism has always been – pragmatic – and what some seem to have allowed it to become – a dogmatic ideology, stuck 20, 30, 50 years in the past.

And again, Nick is right that our party is strongest when we are together -when we have thrashed through an issue together, and come to an agreement together. We are at our best when we are a broad party, weighing up the arguments and coming to the best view we can for the country.

But, after all those ”I agree with Nick”s, I’m afraid our agreement comes to an end. He is absolutely dead wrong that this isn’t actually an argument between competing parts of the party. It’s not really left/right – as I describe above. It is between people who would prefer to be pure ideologues in opposition, than pragmatic and delivering in government. It is between people who understand that what tickles motivated, ideological Party members is not what swing voters want to hear and those who don’t. It is between people who fundamentally dislike the modernisation of the Conservative Party and those who are leading it.

Hopi Sen wrote an excellent piece about the failings of the Tory election campaign – his essential thesis is that the Tories did not connect sufficiently with ‘people like me’ and were not radical enough once they felt securely ahead – whether that was complacency, timidity or lack of coherence is also something I’m sure I’ll come back to.

As we have argued again and again and again, the Conservatives did not win an overall majority because – fundamentally – not enough people believed we had changed sufficiently. As I wrote on ConservativeHome in 2007 (with a longer version here on platform10), it isn’t enough for people to like/trust/respect David Cameron. They need to know he will govern from his centrist, modernising, liberal instincts, not pander to reactionary dogma. Interestingly, David Cameron is running a fair bit ahead of the party generally in approval ratings – on Jan 16 (fieldwork 14-16 Jan), the YouGov poll for the Sun had the party on 37 per cent and David Cameron personally (on Jan 14 – the fieldwork was done 13-14 Jan) on 43 per cent.

There is more – much more – to be done in describing the Conservatives’ offer, both for now and for the 2015 manifesto. We’ve said before that the Coalition presents both risks and opportunities for both parties. I would argue that the opportunities far outweigh the risks – but that requires this coalition government to make a success of its time in office; it requires more modernisation of the Tories; and it requires us to really distil what it is to be a Conservative in the 21st century.

Conservatism is pragmatism in a political form; applying core principles in a modern setting. Russell Kirk’s magnum opus The Conservative Mind puts it succinctly: “Conservatism is not a fixed and immutable body of dogmata”. Cameron’s Conservative Party is applying our core principles to a different environment that presented itself in 1992, 1979 or earlier.

Indeed, the Conservative Party has shown throughout its history that pragmatism trumps idealistic fervour. In previous eras the Party was against Catholic Emancipation before being for it; against repealing the Corn Laws before becoming a Free Trade party; against Parliamentary reform before enacting it etc. Conservatives have favoured gradual change over the radical alternative but the operative word is change.

The Conservative Party did not win the 2010 General Election because we lacked a clear and definitive message and series of attractive policies. Since the electoral arithmetic was against us, it demanded that we act as flexibly as possible to the changed circumstances. This is why the Coalition is important: it demonstrated our flexibility and willingness to negotiate. This pragmatic approach is in direct comparison with Labour’s fixed body of dogma.

Tim Montgomerie is correct to point out that the Prime Minister’s leadership decisions have been imbalanced in favour of the Lib Dems. The PM has acted unfairly to Tory MPs because we expect more from our side of the Coalition. Liberal MPs are not accustomed to being held responsible for anything. As no one expected them to be in Government, their strategy was dictated by local constituency demands rather than anything approaching a proper platform. They have managed to remain virtuous throughout successive parliaments because they were neither powerful nor considered a future government. As only the impotent are pure, so too do the Lib Dems find it tough making decisions and being held to account (they are more used to protesting than being the subject of protests).

This is why we must be flexible with our Lib Dem allies. It is far better to get 70 per cent of our platform across in legislation than getting none through our own intransigence. Yet I agree that the Prime Minister should be wary of upsetting Conservative MPs. His advisors tend to suffer from unanimity of thought and intransigence on their part is just as damaging as if it comes from the backbenchers, many of whom are highly intelligent and eloquent.

Pragmatism must now dictate how No. 10 and No. 11 acts towards the backbenchers. If we accept that our Lib Dem allies can broaden our thinking on political issues, then so too can Conservative MPs. Backbenchers tend to have their ears to the ground and can pick up on voter discontent and discord. This can be fed back to decision-making in Downing Street and hence improve our governing process. This is a natural evolution towards what ConservativeHome calls “mainstream” Conservatism, but which does not forget the importance of the administration’s liberal bent.

The Conservative Party has historically been pragmatic and will continue to be so. Unlike our opponents, we do not use the levers of power to dictate to people how the world ought to be; we understand how things actually are and seek to apply this understand to modern settings. So long as the present administration continues this tradition, the Party will not die:  it will emerge as a stronger and broader political force.