'Modernisers' bring Tory party to its knees

It is tempting for newspapers and television commentators to present all this in terms of personalities.

But this latest meltdown is about more than the contenders, or the procedures surrounding a leadership election. More worrying than these is the sense that the party has no clear or coherent idea of what it believes in, how to communicate that belief, and how to translate that belief into a positive and popular political programme.

Instead, it has been reduced to a state of mumbling contrition and apology for almost everything it believes in. There are clarion calls for the party to "modernise". But it is under the tutelage of the modernisers - those who seek more public spending (but not quite as fast as Labour) and tax cuts "when we can really afford them" - that the party has been reduced to a headless chicken.

Thus, with what effortless disdain did Chancellor Gordon Brown this week flick away, like fluff off his sleeve, the first "attack" by George Osborne, his new opposite number.

His latest "shadow" is not the problem. Rather, it's the array of empty, insubstantial shadows the Tory party has become through all its convulsions. Facing Brown across the Dispatch Box is less a line of extinct volcanoes than a series of very active inverted volcanoes that have erupted inwards.

No other Labour chancellor in history has been able to look across at a Conservative Opposition that has thrashed its way through two constitutions, now going on a third, four party leaders, now going on a fifth, and six shadow chancellors, now trying out a seventh.

The party, despite all this (or perhaps because of it) is even more unsure as to what it really believes and how it would govern this country differently to, or better than, New Labour.

For the Scottish Conservatives, the position looks even more dire, if that is possible.

After a poor election performance, there is a growing turmoil as to whether it should be part of the main UK party at all, and even what it should call itself.

Two weeks ago, it was suddenly saddled with the appointment of a shadow secretary of state for Scotland so at odds with the party's policy over devolution as to trigger a warning of resignation by the Scottish leader.

The offending James Gray was then sacked and replaced - all this within a week - only for Conservatives both in Scotland and London to suggest that this treatment was a travesty of democracy.

Indeed, quite a number of Conservatives suspect that in questioning the usefulness of MSPs and suggesting that Scottish MPs might meet in Holyrood, Mr Gray has a point. Having encountered disillusion on the doorstep about the 415 million-plus Fort Apache at Holyrood, they are not at all convinced that the party's official line of "trying to make devolution work" really cuts it with voters.

As if all this was not enough, under the modernisers' constitutional proposals to put the selection of the UK party leader firmly back in the hands of MPs, the Scottish party would find itself enjoying derisory influence - all of one vote.

These are not just dangerous times for the party. They are dire. And they have been made so by a coup of the modernisers, who seem to have no faith in the party's core beliefs and even less confidence in the party's membership and constituency organisations. What a chain anchor these constituency parties are! How much better if they could only cut out those old codgers with their so-so unfashionable, fuddy-duddy ideas!

Indeed, so deep has the modernising rot set in that it is increasingly difficult to tell the party apart from New Labour.

Earlier this week, the party's new chairman, Francis Maude, issued what he described as "a statement of the party's values" (as if it previously never had any) which would be enshrined in the new constitution.

"We are a national party", this statement declares, "committed to serving the entire nation and open to and respectful of everyone in Britain, regardless of their background, race, sex or religion. We believe in strong communities, cohesive society, personal freedom and responsibility, limited government, the rule of law and an enterprise culture."

WELL, that's sure one in the eye for all those out there who believe in weak communities, anarchic society, personal enslavement, big government, lawlessness and a Soviet economy.

It is a perfect example of how what today's modernisers seize upon as "new" is already pass and well past its sell-by date. Such vapid and meaningless statements of the obvious neither uplift nor inspire. On the contrary. These litanies have descended on our public culture like a dampening fog.

They are redolent of those ghastly identikit "mission statements" that now clutter up the annual reports of companies, from defence contractors to fast-food operators. To add to the sense of gesture gibberish are the earnest declarations from finance directors and accountants of their "passion" for Acme Mousetrap plc.

Modernisers think this cuts mustard. The people despair. Public language in Britain has descended into a numbing and grotesque bureaucratic Stalinism, mantras chanted by rote before and after the Daily Admonition or stiffening soundbite set by the BBC Today programme: Sustainable Communities. Affordable Units. Respect for Diversity.

And all this mush is chanted ever louder as violent crime rises, our streets get dirtier, school classes get more disruptive and the red tape of regulation extends another mile.

The more we chant the mantra, the worse it gets, until we may come to believe that black is white, and white black and the Lie might be the Truth after all. This is the rhetoric that disempowers as it exhorts, disillusions as it spouts and angers as it seeks to placate. The Conservatives should absolutely avoid it at all costs.

For it has everything to play for and win, if only it would stand by those principles for which it has always stood: small government, low tax, free trade, equal opportunity, self-help and a sovereign parliament.

The gift required is to translate these guiding principles into relevant action. In Scotland, the party should determine policies that more effectively capture public disillusion with devolution and a desire to see government (and tax) cut down to size.

Small government can focus more effectively on its core functions, whether policing our streets or repairing our roads.

Whether such policies are articulated by "new" faces or familiar ones, younger ones or older, matters less than that they are articulated clearly and boldly, and above all in language that engages - not enrages.