Matthew d'Ancona: The Tory Right’s antics could ruin Conservative hopes

Barring a serious upset, Douglas Carswell will hold on to his seat at Clacton on October 9, thus becoming the first Ukip candidate to be elected to the Commons. The by-election will be an irritating distraction for the Tories at their last annual conference before the general election, as well as an unwelcome 48th birthday present for David Cameron. So, at least, local opinion polls suggest.

The Tory Right, meanwhile, is doing its best to compound the embarrassment. Having wished Carswell “all the best”, Chris Kelly, the rebel Eurosceptic MP, has announced that he is standing down at the election (the ninth of the 2010 Tory intake to throw in the towel). Stewart Jackson, MP for Peterborough, who regards same-sex marriage as an affront to his religious liberty, has nonetheless urged the Prime Minister to “circle the wagons and show the Right some man love”.

As foreplay, MPs are demanding the right to announce in election material that they will vote for the UK to leave the EU if a referendum is held in 2017: thereby implying that Cameron is incapable of renegotiating Britain’s terms of membership to their satisfaction. While the PM addresses the barbarism of Islamic State and the geopolitical threat of Putin, his party is generating headlines about itself and its mood swings.

This is madness. One would think the Tories were in opposition, conducting a ragged audit of their intentions and identity, pursuing feuds and factional rivalries in amateurish bursts of disaggregation. Four years ago, Cameron had to bring the Lib-Dems on board to enable his party to govern — and has won precious little gratitude from his fellow Tories for pulling off that improbable feat or for holding together a coalition that has enacted radical legislation on (for instance) education, welfare and the EU. There are only eight months left before the election. Has anyone mentioned this to the Tory movement?

The model was meant to be 1992. In that election, you will recall, an incumbent Tory prime minister trailed a soft Left Labour leader in the polls — until the 11th hour. John Major’s defeat of Neil Kinnock (a great admirer of Ed Miliband) was one of Labour’s darkest hours, proof that the Conservative Party remained a brutally effective electoral force, never to be written off.

As the economy recovered and Miliband sweated under scrutiny, it seemed possible that the bacon sandwich of “One Nation” Labour might collapse in his hands over the next few months. Yet the Conservative movement appears perversely determined that the closer precedent should be 1997, rather than 1992. Between Major’s victory and his landslide defeat by Tony Blair, the Tory party turned in on itself, engaging in civil war over Europe and burying its snout in the trough of sleaze.

The velcro of democratic commitment simply came unstuck: the party was introspective and detached, as if its direction mattered more than the country’s. The fury of the electorate is still awesome to recall, and should be recalled: there is no guarantee that the Tories will win more seats next year than they did in 2010.

It hardly needs restating that Major had made many mistakes. Cameron has made his share, too. But now, as then, the Tory party has displayed a broad streak of willful indiscipline, self-obsession and collective presumption — the symptoms of the unleadable. I can understand why Boris Johnson wants to be Prime Minister. I cannot imagine why he would like to be Conservative leader.

In the 20th century, the Tories were accurately described as a party obsessed with power and fantastically good at acquiring and retaining it. It was adaptive in style, empirical in its method. After the war, the party evolved alongside the revolution in healthcare, benefits and education. After the crises of the Seventies, it adjusted once more to embrace solutions that would pull Britain back from the edge of economic ruin.

It is too often forgotten that Thatcherism was above all a practical agenda: a programme of reforms to revive the country, rather than to please the party. The true legacy of that programme is Britain’s status in the world today. But it also changed the nature of the Conservative movement, injecting the notion of ideological purity into its bloodstream.