It was Evelyn Waugh who dismissed the Tories as having ‘never put the clock back a single second’. Now, even the party’s own MPs seem similarly sceptical, with Danny Kruger lamenting the last 14 years of power as leaving the country ‘sadder, less united and less conservative’. It’s one thing for a parliamentarian to bemoan the party for dropping in the polls, but unusual for one to be so scathing of an entire period of government.

From austerity to Brexit, the party has failed to find and articulate an overarching vision

In fairness to the Conservatives, their record is not as hopeless as current polling might suggest. As Kruger himself acknowledges, education has been radically reformed. The Conservatives have introduced academies, allowing for freedom and innovation in school leadership, and reducing the centralised power of the state. This has also borne results – standards are now higher in several metrics, including the internationally regarded Pisa scores.

Crime has also fallen dramatically. Despite regular news stories about ineffective policing and weak sentencing, non-fraud crime has roughly halved since 2010. Theft and violent crime have continued their multi-decade-long fall, despite cuts to the police and the economic wake of the financial crisis. That Britain is both safer and better educated than a decade and a half ago should be something the Conservatives are boasting of – yet neither the party nor the public seem to be making this connection.

This feels in part because Tory successes seem incidental to their time in government. They seem to have lacked a central vision or mission. Instead, the party has gone through various waves of policy and direction – buffeted by its internal factions and by the pull of electoral trends. As a result, it has failed to chart a real course through these 14 years.

Whereas Tony........

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