I’LL admit it: I’m a connoisseur of the madder corners of the Conservative and Unionist Party. I always have been. I first picked up the taste for observing these peculiar specimens in their natural habitats when still a teenager.

Back in 2003, a rather earnest, pious schoolfriend decided to take himself off to London to attend a Compassionate Conservatism Conference at Tory HQ. In most respects, he was a central-casting young Tory. He carried a briefcase to school, tended towards mild priggery, practised a judgemental form of Christianity, didn’t drink, smoke or swear – and demonstrated a reflexive deference for authority.

Briefcase Bob – as he was ­inevitably known – represented the perfect ­social ­cover to infiltrate this alien social ­environment. So he signed us both up – true believer and this cynic – for a trip to the imperial ­capital to hear what precisely the ­Conservative Party of 2003 imagined ­political ­compassion might look like.

We were surrounded by 150 Conservatives in their teens, 20s and 30s and a good chunk of the Shadow Cabinet explaining their vision for social justice. It proved just as surreal as you’d imagine.

From memory, the crowd was an ­interesting mix. There were old-school, patrician, one-nation Tories; unideological climbers looking for social connections; gilded children of the gentry (some overlap here); sincere decent folk who seemed to believe Compassionate Conservatism was a goer; Communitarian pray-away-the-gay social reactionaries, and crypto-fascists in Union Jack underpants.

I remember one chap told me he thought “everywhere north of Manchester was ­basically the same” – a one-nation social justice message if ever I’ve heard one. ­Mercifully, there wasn’t a breakout ­session to allow participants to leave votive ­candles at a shrine to Margaret Thatcher – but you could feel the Iron Lady’s unsleeping spirit hovering over the proceedings ­disapprovingly.

Bubbling beneath the surface, not even very subtly, was discontent with the whole endeavour, discontent with Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership, and a sense that the Tory Party is nothing without the smack of firm government – which usually means vilifying your opponents as closet socialists, traitors or crazed leftists whose main mission in........

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