Ridley Grove: I wish we weren't 20% ahead

Ridley Grove, a pseudonym, works for a London think tank.  He argues that the party's most creative time was when it faced a difficult political climate.  He contends that the party is sleeping on its large lead. He urges David Davis to challenge the party to produce more serious responses to the problems that have grown under Labour.

"Poorly profitable businesses improve their products. Broadcasters that are shedding viewers overhaul their scheduling. Underdog presidential bids gamble with their choice of running mates. Political parties that are underperforming in the polls improve their policies and adapt their message. There are plenty of exceptions to these rules but they are exceptions.

Hands up who can remember Gordon Brown's honeymoon? Briefly, foolishly, unthinkingly the British voter gave Mister Brown the benefit of the doubt. Labour were 10pc ahead in some newspaper opinion surveys. David Miliband predicted another ten years of Labour rule. It is scrumptious to remember that hubris now. During that same period we saw the very best of David Cameron and his team. In hot water the party became stronger. The economically suicidal policies of Mister Zac Goldsmith were consigned to landfill, rather than for recycling. Andy Coulson persuaded "Dave" to stop hugging hoodies and hug The Sun and The Daily Mail. On Mister Cameron's Damascan road to Wapping he rediscovered neckties, a dollop of Euroscepticism and vowed to fight "Anarchy in the UK". George Osborne disowned "uber-modernization" and promised to scrap inheritance tax. No sensible observer believed that this could be funded with his tax on rich foreigners but the pips were squeaking so noisily from Labour's tax burden that we did not care.

The Conservatives moved ahead in the polls and they deserved to. They were addressing the nation's problems. The summer "rebalancing", as this website described it, also precipitated the collapse of Labour's standing.

So far, so good but the party has gone to sleep since the polls were transformed and David Cameron got nine of his fingers on the keys to Downing Street. It is true that Michael Gove has been awake. His education policies are half interesting. David Cameron has woken up to savage the hapless Brown every Wednesday lunchtime. He has also said Thatcheresque things about the Russian bear. Also now awake. But the overall posture has been horizontal. I do not argue that there has been no activity. I don't need to see the Conservative Research Department's list of small announcements. I do not wish to marvel at the Press Office's bulging folders of press clippings. But am I alone in worrying that we are a party unprepared for the Everest, K2 and Kilimanjaro of mountainous problems that the post-1997 years have spawned?

Do we really expect America's Chapter 11 insolvency regime to rejuvenate Britain's economy? Do we really expect a few hundred more maternity nurses to mend Britain's broken society? Do we really expect extra R&R to transform the morale of Britain's armed forces?

Actually, I like most of the small ideas but we should not pretend that they will make much of a difference to anything. This is a time for swords but we are armed with penknives.

Perhaps once Mister Cameron is at Number Ten and Mister Osborne is at Number Eleven we shall see serious action? Perhaps we will see Labour's bloated, drifting state cut back to size? Perhaps we will see a complacent NHS face real competition? Perhaps we'll cut funding to the arts industry and its hostility to nearly everything conservatives hold dear? Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps but I don't hold out great hopes. The Conservative leadership circle lives for politics. Like Mister Blair its number one ambition is to get into government. Its number two ambition is to win re-election. The only thing that will force it to abandon its complacency is political competition. An exhausted Labour party and a lightweight Liberal Democrat party will not provide it.