IDS must stop bending with the wind

According to 1066 And All That, England's Civil War amounted to a struggle between the "wrong but wromantic" Cavaliers and the "right but repulsive" Roundheads. Today's civil war inside the Conservative Party threatens to go one worse (or, depending on your point of view, one better) and hand victory to people whom most voters see as both wrong and repulsive.

The media are often accused of getting over-excited by minor political dramas. This time is different. The damage done by the events around last week's shadow cabinet reshuffle is hard to overstate.

The destructive drama continues to undermine Tory fortunes, with David Davis's weekend accusation of a "cowardly campaign of character assassination". This would have been remarkable enough had it been said by someone who had been banished to the backbenches. From the mouth of someone who continues to serve on Iain Duncan Smith's front bench, it is truly astonishing.

Mr Davis's words have three possible explanations. The first is that Mr Davis is paranoid. If so, Mr Duncan Smith should sack him from the shadow cabinet immediately.

The second possibility is that the party leader played some role in the "character assassination" of the former party chairman. If so, Mr Davis has no business continuing to serve a leader he can no longer trust.

The third, and most likely, possibility is that Mr Duncan Smith did not sanction, let alone take part in, the character assassination, but was overwhelmed by the anti-Davis faction and agreed to replace him with Theresa May. If so, then Mr Davis should not only quit the front bench; he should campaign actively for a new party leader. For if Mr Duncan Smith is so easily pushed about, then the electorate will keep him well away from 10 Downing Street and the levers of real power.

Whatever the truth, Mr Davis should not remain in the shadow cabinet. What, though, should Mr Duncan Smith do now? He seems to prefer the charade of unity to the whiff of gunshot. He wants to keep everyone in his team - the Davis and Portillo factions, modernisers and traditionalists, social liberals and social authoritarians.

This is not an ignoble aim. All major parties must be broad churches to some degree. But here, the price of ecumenism is weakness.

MR Duncan Smith's fatal mistake is to believe that the electorate despises a divided party. In fact, the public despises a badly led party. Divisions do harm only when they reveal a party that its leader cannot control. Think back to Michael Foot's Labour Party in the early Eighties, or Margaret Thatcher's last months as Prime Minister, or John Major's Tory Party in the mid-Eighties. In those instances, divisions were fatal.

In other circumstances, division is not merely desirable, but essential. Margaret Thatcher's destruction of the Tory wets in 1981 laid the ground for her radical reforms of the mid-Eighties. Neil Kinnock's public assault on Labour's far Left enhanced his reputation and helped to make Labour electable once again. Tony Blair's successful battle to change Clause Four established him as a true moderniser.

The common feature was that each party leader chose the ground on which they fought, identified their enemies, and thrashed them. In so doing, they achieved a double victory: they showed that they were effective leaders, and they made clear their political intentions. Victory would have been impossible had they pursued the tactics of compromise and conciliation.

Mr Duncan Smith has done a number of sensible things since he became Tory leader. He has not banged on about Europe. He has sought to erase his party's image as uncaring. He has looked for new policies on the public services.

But these will be worthless unless he sheds his reputation for bending with the wind. He needs to show that he has the steel to lead and a purpose to fight for. On the evidence of the past few days, he heads a rabble without a cause.