The Tory leader

Yesterday morning's leader in The Times on the Conservative Party resulted in a flurry of responses online.

James Forsyth, the main and indispensable voice of Coffee House noted:

Today’s leader seems to go against what Danny was arguing just a fortnight ago. Then, he wrote that the “party that is first to let the voters know what it really stands for... loses”.

He was delighted by my apparent shift.

Well, as Michael Fabricant once said to Gyles Brandreth when described as wearing a wig - it is a bit more complicated than that.

I did indeed write that it is hard for any party to make clear what it stands for without creating contrast. If it moves from the centre ground it creates this contrast, but it also loses.

And I haven't changed my mind about that.

So why the leader?

Well, the leader was a declaration of intent. With a 20 point poll lead the Tories stand an excellent chance of being the next government. The job of The Times and its leaders will be to ensure that their claim to govern is carefully scrutinised.

We want to ensure that the national mood about Labour does not obscure the policies of the Tories and their fitness to govern. We don't want the Conservatives to take over and be no good.

Obviously the Tories have difficult strategic choices to make. They have to balance clarity with caution about voter sensibilities, they have to balance the size of their potential victory with the depth of their mandate and so on. And as a columnist I might want to weigh in on that.

But it is not the job of The Times and its leader column to solve the tactical and strategic dilemmas of the Tory party. The balance they want to strike is their problem.

Ours is to press for the policies and ideas we and our readers care about. And that we will do.