No party for Tories as spectre of May defeat haunts conference

So to Blackpool and the Tory post-mortem.

It promises to be a ghoulish, if surprisingly well-attended, affair. Some 5,000 representatives of the much-depleted family gather in the Winter Gardens today for what the chieftains hope will be a controlled blood-letting.

Their turnout will help disguise the absence of the fair-weather friends, lobbyists, captains of industry, newspaper proprietors and the like, who swiftly and callously abandoned the scene of last May's disaster.

Champagne will be plentiful, easing the early-evening reunions with the long-estranged, not to mention the assorted prodigals and black sheep. But they will need stronger stuff during those night watches, as they contemplate the corpse of the Conservative Party, butchered now, simply unrecognisable as the ruthless election-winning machine which enabled them only recently to consider themselves Britain's natural party of government.

Surveying the scene, the obvious first question for many is why on earth William Hague, just 36, should have wanted to place himself at the head of this warring faction. It wasn't even as if they demonstrably wanted him. He was the second and third choice of many, elected, like his predecessor before him, because he wasn't somebody else.

United in grief they will confirm his an ointment and expect him to work some magic. So the question arises: what does Mr Hague need to do to restore belief, confidence and purpose to a party reeling from its worst election defeat since 1832?

Yet even as one puts the question, the more pertinent still presents itself. What can Mr Hague do?

This is a time of great uncertainty for Britain's Conservatives.

Mr Blair, it seems, can just about walk on water. And as they watch him abandon Labourism, to record approval ratings, many Tories are beginning to think the unthinkable, that the Prime Minister may indeed prove to be the Son of Thatcher; a man better able, because his heart is demonstrably in the right place, to reform the welfare state and complete her mission to end the dependency culture.

For every purpose there is a season. As Churchill was the man to lead the nation in war, so, plainly, he was not the man for peacetime reconstruction. Mrs Thatcher successfully, and necessarily, saw off the trades unions and the left. But her success brought problems. The Tories were seen as confrontational and divisive; uncaring about the notion of society; hostile to the concept of high-standard public service provision; indifferent to a mushrooming underclass.

Disturbingly for Mr Hague, some Tories are beginning to think that the task of delivering the competitive, low-cost, low-tax economy of the 21st century might best be achieved by a government appreciative of the conflicting instincts which drive the voters. For they still want the combination of low taxes and high standards of publicly-funded schools, health-care and provision for the elderly.

The Tory high command will charge that this is the illusion at the heart of New Labour; that Mr Blair will not be able to square that circle; and that, in the end, a Labour Party which instinctively believes in redistribution will not allow Mr Blair to make the "hard choices" of which he spoke so eloquently in Brighton.

And they may be proved right in the long run. But the road to disillusion with Mr Blair promises to be a very long haul indeed.

Nothing succeeds like success. For the moment the country is willing the Prime Minister on. So much so that, according to the pollsters, three million more people think they voted Labour last May than actually did.

Mr Blair knows the honeymoon won't last for ever. Enthusiasm will begin to wane when people realise that his menu comes complete with prices. But people like the look of the dishes on offer. And the better because so many of them come with a distinctive Tory flavour. Mr Blair can declare himself for "zero tolerance" of crime and offer a package of measures reminiscent of Michael Howard without making the flesh creep.

His programme directed against unruly neighbours and young criminals will fly because it finds a resonance in working-class housing estates, not because it panders to a right wing wanting to dole out punishment for the hell of it. Similarly he can target single mothers, threaten them with work and a loss of benefits, because Blair, the "modern man", can explain that 100,000 teenage pregnancies a year represent a serious social problem rather than a judgment on private morality.

The Tory Party's answer to Mr Blair's modernity is Mr Hague. And his brand of modernity, sipping coconut oil at the Notting Hill Carnival, wearing a baseball cap on visits to theme parks, has been received with cruel derision.

Friends say it is too soon to judge a man of clearly considerable political skills; that the timing of the leadership election landed him with a long summer recess, denying him the platform of Commons question time where he has shown some ability to pin Mr Blair to the ropes. They also denigrate the cult of personality which sees such focus on his baldness and accent, the contrast drawn between attempted, and so far patently lacking, gravitas.

But that lack was displayed when he embroiled the royal family in a party political row, accusing Mr Blair of hijacking the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Critics say it is evidenced, too, in his appointment of close advisers; his apparent climbdown, with the promise of a free vote for backbenchers on the European single currency; his decision to seek endorsement of his leadership and internal party reform in a single ballot; and his failure thus far to define those reforms in the face of conflicting demands from his MPs and the voluntary party.

Mr Hague will emerge the winner when the result of the ballot is announced later today. But party members will be holding their breath as he struggles to define a route up the electoral mountain; torn, like Mr Major before him, between those wanting an ideological heave and those wishing to compete with Mr Blair on the centre ground.

They, and we, should expect no early answers. Like Mrs Thatcher in the mid-1970s, Mr Hague would do well to travel light on the policy front. Indeed a policy of wait and see what happens with and to Mr Blair may well be all Mr Hague can offer in the short to medium term.

But with opinion polls showing four out of five voters thinking him weak, and his public recognition lagging behind Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Michael Portillo, Mr Hague will be uncomfortably aware that the Tory party will be waiting to see what happens with him.

With judgment reserved, they will also be keeping a close eye on Mr Portillo and the prince across the water, Chris Patten, whose presence on the ballot paper would surely have produced a different result in last June's leadership contest.