Simon Heffer in today’s Daily Telegraph asks pertinent (or impertinent if you’re a David Cameron supporter) questions about Mr C’s various espousals in the Party’s current leadership campaign.

He lists some of Mr Cameron’s soundbites:

He [David Cameron] wrote that the party needed “fundamental change” if it were not to be seen to be “out of step with the modern world” and to “lack the association with aspiration and opportunity that is essential for political success”.

Mr Heffer also refers to Mr Cameron’s rant (it was in The Spectator a few weeks back) aimed at people just like Mr Heffer:

Apparently rather cross with me, he said the attitude I personify was “that the Conservative Party just needs to shout louder [sic] and hate the modern world even more” and that it “is not just part of the problem. It is the problem”.

Mr Heffer searched his previous columns for evidence that he fitted this description and found none. Actually, I could find plenty of what it is that Mr Cameron is actually referring to - although none of it would support Mr Cameron’s verdict on Mr Heffer’s motivations.

On the rare occasions on which I had actually written about the Tory party - and it has been a subject I have long avoided in order not to drive away readers - it was to argue that it should espouse a smaller state, lower taxes, more individual responsibility, national sovereignty, the rule of law and a humane but strong national identity.

Mr Heffer offers his own suggestion for what drove Mr Cameron to reach the conclusion he reached:

Because Mr Cameron has no principles of his own, he has to attack his imagined opponents for what he hopes are theirs. This is best done by caricature, parody and, not to put too fine a point on it, a display of downright howling ignorance.

Mr Heffer goes on to question what it is the Conservative Party means when it says it has ‘to move on’. Move on to what? Move on from what?

For all the talk about the Conservative Party needing a Clause 4 moment - that is, a moment such as Labour had when it ditched its ridiculous membership clause advocating the public ownership of the means of production - and so signalling to the rest of the country that it was indeed ‘New’ Labour - there is a problem of knowing which part of conservative belief has been discredited to the point that ditching it would be ‘a good thing’.

So Mr Cameron’s apparent decision to ape Tony Blair is strategically flawed because the theory behind it - such that it is - is missing one of the most essential ingredients of the Blairite ascendancy - namely, the dropping of something meaningful and substantial from the party ideology that would sufficiently demonstrate that we’ve ‘moved on’.

The point is: Tony Blair - and the Labour Party - really did move on. Dropping Clause 4 was very big news and all the country were in no doubt of it. The Party looked genuinely to have changed. It seems all we’d be doing if Mr Cameron wins the leadership election is copying the Blairite style of government that followed this. But that style has now been comprehensively discredited as, years on, the public now recognises that the big smile, blokey delivery and passionate speeches are ‘for the moment’ vacuities and that, when the glitter finally settles, NHS performance does not in any way reflect the awesome sums being spent on it, education is becoming a national embarrassment, family life is in freefall, our pension funds have been mugged and our streets are roamed by the obnoxious and sometimes dangerous offspring of parents living in Labour’s socially libertarian utopia.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: we only need 45% of the electorate to recognise that we offer something meaningfully different to the current regime for us to sweep the board at a general election. But we have painted ourselves into such a corner that we are now in a position where we have to actively convince people who have not voted for the Conservative Party for many years - if ever - that we’re even a possible alternative.

Presenting clearly explained conservative policies will not please 100% of the electorate but it doesn’t have to. The gamble isn’t in being true to conservative ideas; the gamble - as has been demonstrated over the last three - count them! - elections is in continuing to eschew them. The electorate will not vote for a Conservative Party that is little more than a new New Labour. They will vote either for the original one or for something quite different. Only David Davis seems capable of providing us with something quite different. He, then, is the key to the Conservative Party’s success.