Iain Dale, one of the central figures in David Davis's 2005 leadership campaign, has been a loyal friend. He didn't agree with Mr Davis's decision to resign as Shadow Home Secretary and fight a by-election, but he threw himself into the cause.
And he has tried his best to make the whole thing look less like one of Baldrick's cunning plans than it it really was.
Here is his latest effort: One result from this by-election is that it has demonstrated the growing disconnect between the Westminster Village and the rest of the country.
So-called expert commentators dismissed Davis as 'bonkers', 'going through a mid life crisis' or worse.
The rest of the country saw a politician standing up for something he believed in, willing to make personal sacrifices for the cause. Whether they agreed with him or not, they liked a politician who strayed from the norm.
Is this true? And who was right?
In so far as anybody outside Westminster gave it the slightest thought, it is probably true that they felt Mr Davis was right to stand up for his principle.
It would be quite wrong to suggest, however, that the decision lit up the countryside, splitting families and causing people to glass each other at closing time shouting about 42 days. Most people were entirely indifferent, indeed largely unaware, of the by-election and why it was fought.
Anyone who thinks otherwise, grossly overestimates how much the general public knows or cares about political events of this kind.
Then there is the question of who was right. I think the Westminster Village, of which (if the term means anything) Iain and I would both be regarded as members, was right.
I think David Davis's by-election was deeply eccentric and self indulgent.
The man gave up an extremely strong chance of being Home Secretary to stand in a by-election he had no chance whatsoever of losing. Winning it proved nothing. And now he is back in Parliament, on the backbenches. He may think he will be respected for his strong stance, but he was respected for his strong stance before.
A few weeks back, before his Baldrick moment, I was discussing David with a senior member of the Shadow Cabinet.
He was right on 42 days, said the politician, when so many of us thought he'd got it wrong. He was right on the issue and right on the politics, he said. And added - I really respect him for that.
Now much of that respect among senior colleagues has gone. And for what?
If that isn't bonkers, Iain, what is?
The Tories are proposing to pay people to recycle. What should one make of this proposal?
Now, it is impossible for Government actually to pay people to do anything. All it is doing is taking money from everybody and only giving it back to those who recycle.
In other words, economically it is precisely the same as fining people for failing to recycle. Psychologically, however, it is quite different. They are choosing to frame the policy as an incentive rather than as a punishment.
Much that we know about incentives suggests that offering an incentive rather than threatening a fine will work less well. Kahneman and Tversky's work on loss aversion shows this pretty clearly.
So this policy is an error? No. Despite what I've said about the psychology, it is sensible.
The fine would work better than the incentive if you were equally likely to receive either. What makes the incentive idea work is that there is little avoidance (provided the system is designed properly, an important caveat).
Most people are not put off by fines and charges because they think it unlikely they will have to pay them.
The only way of making a rarely levied fine equivalent to an easy to claim incentive is by making the sum you are fined absolutely huge whenever you are caught. And the politics of that are impossible.
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.
 Janet Daley writes today on Brown's first year and, acutely and correctly, fingers his first conference speech rather than the abandoned election as the moment when it all started to go badly wrong.
She then adds this: So now for the second myth of the past year: that the success of the Cameron Conservatives is attributable to the great modernising project in which they "detoxified the Conservative brand" and "reinvented the party's image". (Or is it "reinvented the brand" and "detoxified the image"? Whatever.)
Let's get one historical fact absolutely straight. What transformed the party's standing and turned the opinion polls on their heads was George Osborne's announcement at the last party conference that the next Conservative government would cut inheritance tax.
As you might guess I don't quite see it that way.
First it is absolutely obvious that the reinventing of the party's image has been vital to the improvement in the poll rating. This is so plainly the case that I am surprised that Janet still wants to argue that it isn't. I suspect the reason is that she really wishes that it wasn't true.
Second, the inheritance tax proposal was not at variance with modernising. It was part of the same strategy. The fact that it was funded was central to its success. I strongly supported it. It was developed by George Osborne and agreed by David Cameron and neither of them thought it a departure.
If Janet, who is as on the ball as they come, thought it was then she did not understand the modernisers thrust.
Our fault, not hers I think.
An interesting observation this morning by Chris Giles, the Economics Editor of the Financial Times: It also emerged last night that the Bank, not the Financial Services Authority, would take responsibility for the new special resolution regime to deal with failing banks and its officials would sit in Threadneedle Street.
The trigger to put a bank into the special bankruptcy procedure would still sit with the FSA, but the Bank would have a significant power of oversight of that process.
With the Bank getting the resolution regime and Sir John moving aside next year, leaving a vacancy that might be filled by Paul Tucker, the Bank's head of markets, the Treasury has adopted all the recent Conservative proposals on financial stability.
After similar reversals of policy on inheritance tax and non-domiciled taxation, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, will have more ammunition to claim he is having a greater effect on policy than the chancellor.
Taking Conservative proposals and implementing them has an obvious advantage - it robs the Tories of any practical ideas they advance and leaves them with all the impractical or unpopular ones.
For that reason, nicking Tory ideas has been a standard Brown tactic.
Leadenly, he has failed to realise that it has stopped working.
The same tactic is now simply robbing the Government of one of its best, probably actually its single best, political advantages - the credibility of governing that ensures that you are seen as the anchor point and all change is seen as risky.
Iain Dale points out that the David Davis website has launched. And it comes with its own blog...
This morning both in a leading article and in a Rachel Sylvester column the Times makes harsh criticism of David Davis. And beneath both can be found comments from readers who believe the writers just don't get it.
Iain Dale makes similar points in a very articulate post. For him this is Westminster against the world. Davis is taking a stand he feels and it is about time someone did.
Let me take a moment to explain why I believe this isn't quite right.
The 42 days bill is deeply wrong and proposed for deeply wrong reasons. The bill now includes not only an unjustifiable extension to detention without charge but an absurd and unworkable review process which muddles the functions of Parliament and the courts.
It has only been advanced for political reasons and was shoved through entirely to save the Prime Minister from embarrassment.
So it deserves to be strenuously opposed. In that Davis is correct.
There was a time when all the Tories could have done about it was organise a stunt. And Davis's resignation isn't a bad stunt as these things go. So what's wrong with it?
What's wrong with it is that there is now more the Tories can do.
They can show themselves fit to be an alternative government and see Labour out at the next election. What the Tories need to demonstrate now is not that they are capable of even stronger opposition but that they are capable of governing. Now is the time to prepare a real alternative and persuade people to support it.
I always rather suspected that Davis didn't get this. That he was a lets-just-attack-Labour-more-strongly merchant. It was one of the reasons I didn't want him to be leader.
Lots of people think he is being brave. I think it is the opposite. I think he found the idea of providing a reasoned alternative and actually being Home Secretary rather scary. He is more comfortable as a perpetual critic. So he has found a way of avoiding the real challenge.
 There's nothing like being 1000s of miles away to get things into perspective.
My holidays seem fated to coincide with huge news events or at least they would do if I believed in fate.
So far I've managed to be on holiday for the death of Princess Diana, the resignation from the Tory party of Shaun Woodward, the resignation from the government of Peter Mandelson and 9/11. When I was a kid I was also on holiday for the resignation of Richard Nixon.
The Davis resignation is probably seen by him as something like the Diana class. By me, it's more like the Woodward class.
I expect it will come to be seen as more striking than significant.
If it is remembered at all in a few years time I think it will be the decision of Nick Clegg not to fight this by-election rather than the decision of David Davis to fight it.
A round-up of comments on David Davis's resignation. We'll keep updating.
15.43: Bryan Appleyard: David Davis is Dudley Moore
15.31: Benedict Brogan's Blog: David Davis: Cameron cool under fire
14.34: Coffee House: Put your questions to David Davis
13.39: Nick Robinson's Newslog: A divisive Davis
13.31: Three Line Whip: David Davis: "bring it on, Kelvin"
13.15: Iain Dale's Diary: Kelvin MacKenzie Gaffe: "Hull is an Absolute Shocker"
13.09: Tim Montgomerie in Comment is Free: Davis won't divide us
12.30: Boulton & Co: Odds on favourite
12.05: Alix Mortimer in Liberal Democrat Voice: Down and dirty with the tabloid press
11.38: Jim Pickard in Westminster Blog: Going out in a blaze of glory
11.26: Coffee House: David Davis: the morning view
10.54: John Redwood: The two Davids
10.52: Jeremy Hunt: DD blindsides Westminster press corps
10.45: Guido Fawkes in Order Order: Freedom Fighter v Bottler Brown
10.41: Iain Dale's Diary: Thank God for Kelvin MacKenzie
10.32: Benedict Brogan: DD still has friends
10.29: Nick Robinson's Newslog: Laughing off a late life crisis
10.20: Alexander Baker in Labour Home: Labour should not indulge David Davis' ego
FRIDAY:
17.43: Fraser Nelson in Coffee House: The passion of David Davis
17.32: Politics Home: How split are the Tories over anti-terror legislation?
17.25: Three Line Whip: Labour to allow David Davis a free run
17.23: Benedict Brogan's Blog: DD: beware the Ken precedent
17.02: Stephen Tall in Liberal Democrat Voice: New Poll: Should the Lib Dems stand in Haltemprice & Howden?
16.55: Adam Boulton in Boulton & Co: David Davis's Downsides
16.42: Guido Fawkes in Order Order: Labour PPC "opposed to 42 days"
16.36: Dizzy Thinks: Is Brown about to follow Clegg?
16.30: Iain Dale's Diary: David Davis's walk into the unknown
16.18: Politics Home: Text of Davis statements to BBC and Sky
16.15: Lynne Featherstone: David Davis
15.57: Guido Fawkes in Order Order: Davis invited to stand as Libertarian Party candidate
15.39: Liberal Burblings: A prima donna act and a pointless by-election
15.29: Tory Diary: Dominic Grieve: Tories will repeal 42 days
15.19: Benedict Brogan's Blog: Grieve is permanent - and DD is out
15.12: Jonathan Isaby in Three Line Whip: Dominic Grieve finally gets his chance
15.00: Fraser Nelson in Coffee House: Davis: the word in Westminster
14.54: Martin Bright in Bright's Blog: I Salute David Davis
14.50: Lord Norton in Lords of the Blog: Westminster rumour mill
14.43: James Cleverly: David Davis resigns on principle over 42 days detention
14.34: Stephen Tall in Liberal Democrat Voice: The David Davis resignation: what it means
14.30: Nick Robinson's Newslog: Unpredictable politics
14.28: Andy McSmith in Open House: A rush of blood he'll live to regret
14.17: Tom Harris in Labour Home: David Davis: 'I have a cunning plan!'
14.15: Niall Paterson in Boulton & Co: Wow
14.09: Coffee House: Cameron responds to Davis
14.00: Three Line Whip: Labour celebrate as David Davis resigns
13.57: John Redwood: David Davis - what a stand!
13.49: James Forsyth in Coffee House: Will David Davis be denied a publicity triumph?
13.47: Centre Right Update: I cannot see an up-side for the Conservative Party in this
13.44: Benedict Brogan: A high-risk stunt
13.41: Sam Coates in Red Box: David Davis resigns: what does this mean?
13.39: Boulton & Co: Dominic Grieve is to replace Davis as Shadow Home Secretary.
13.24: Michael Savage in Open House: David Davis: a theory
13.18: Three Line Whip: David Davis's resignation is a rare move
13.15: Adam Boulton in Boulton & Co: BREAKING NEWS: David Davis To Resign
13.00: David T in Harry's Place: Why Did Dave Davis Resign?
12.50: Centre Right: David Davis is resigning
12.36: Nick Robinson's Newslog: Westminster rumours
A superb article in yesterday's Telegraph from Janet Daley. Here's what she has to say about Conservative policy making: Preparing for government is quite a different thing from preparing to fight a general election. The former requires meticulously constructed plans, costed to the penny and tested (at least theoretically) by experts.
The latter requires a simple, comprehensible over-arching theme that seems to draw together all of the diverse proposals and reforms you hope to introduce, and presents them in a morally and politically coherent way.
This is absolutely on the money.
The danger for the Tories is too much detail, not too little.
 What should one make on the extraordinary YouGov poll published in this morning's Sun - a 26 point Tory lead with Labour on 23 per cent?
Clearly it is telling a large truth - that Brown is in terrible trouble and that Cameron's shift to the centre is working. But what about the actual figures? What should we think of them?
Let's leave aside the question of margins of error, and whether the poll is a slight outlier, and look at the big picture - the scale of it.
This is the sort of scale of lead that Labour registered more than once at the height of King Tony. And then he won in a landslide.
Just one thing though - the poll leads weren't accurate. The result produced a much smaller gap between the parties, but a very big majority because the swing wasn't uniform. Companies that adjusted for the so-called spiral of silence - the shy Tory effect - got closer to the voting proportions than those that didn't.
This produces a fascinating debate. I'll put the always stimulating Peter Kellner's side first.
YouGov use computer surveys. These have several advantages, including the fact that it is easier to poll busy people. Kellner believes that this helped them get the London Mayoral result spot on.
He also believes it has another important advantage - it eliminates interviewer bias. In other words, respondents don't wish to admit they are Tories when talking to a real person, but when interacting with a computer they can tell the truth. Hence YouGov get larger Tory leads. And they did get London right.
Now I'll put the alternative.
Since YouGov was established there hasn't been much of a spiral of silence because Tory shyness has diminished. The other companies haven't really needed to adjust for it. YouGov's failure to do so hasn't mattered.
Now the spiral is back. But what we are getting is shy Labour supporters not shy Tories.
The idea is that the herd effect has an impact on anybody's willingness to admit they are on the minority side. This impact is the same for Labour people as for Tories.
ICM and Times pollster Populus are weighting their polls exactly as they used to - redistributing a proportion of the don't knows to reflect past voting behaviour. In the 1990s this boosted the Tory share. Now the exact same method ends up boosting Labour.
And as for computers, well, it is far from certain that people are honest to computers. A recent study showed that people are polite to computers exactly as they are to interviewers. You may get a spiral of silence, or at least a proportion of it, when conducting an internet poll.
This theory would suggest that YouGov are overestimating the Tory lead by failing to compensate for Labour shyness.
What about London? It is possible that YouGov were more accurate in London largely because of the superiority of sampling in a busy city using the internet.
It is also possible that the spiral of silence that prevents people admitting that they support Gordon Brown did not exist for Livingstone. And the shyness of Ken voters may have faded during the campaign accounting for the drop in Johnson's YouGov poll lead as the vote came closer.
Then again, maybe London just shows YouGov are right.
As I say, a fascinating debate.
Incidentally, I don't think Gordon Brown's salvation lies in the answers to these questions. In retrospect, the existence of shy Tories in 1992 was the leading indicator that electoral disaster was just over the horizon.
It isn't good news if even your supporters won't admit it. Particularly to a computer.
 Here's the thing. What David Cameron has been doing works. The modernisers were right. Their critics were wrong.
The critics claimed that if Cameron was doing the right thing the Tories would be miles ahead. Now the Tories are miles ahead I hope the critics draw the appropriate conculsion.
And I hope David Cameron does too.
The Tories should not interpret the result as indicating that the modernising phase is over, but as suggesting that a moderate, liberal, compassionate Conservative Party can win office. He should be repeating the messages of change every day.
He should also assemble policies designed to do two things - enable the Tories to govern effectively and reassure swing voters that Cameron will not abandon them.
On policy there will be a temptation to produce large volumes in order to satisfy the media that there is a programme for Government. This would be a mistake. The aim should be quality and not quantity. Having too many policies risks tying the party to small but silly ideas that look incoherent.
David Cameron does need to settle on his big themes - but he won't do this through micro policy ideas. And certainly not by a big shift to the right.
ALSO: What should they do next...Labour
Dr Greg Clark, the talented economist and MP for Tunbridge Wells, had a ten minute rule debate in the House of Commons yesterday.
Here's the thrust of what he had to say: In this country, mobile phone companies restrict people to their networks without transferring them to where signals are strongest and best.
It is not as if we have blanket mobile phone coverage in this country—only 65 per cent of the population is currently covered by all four 2G mobile phone companies.
That figure drops to 28 per cent in Wales, an area that several of my hon. Friends represent. Given that we do not have blanket coverage, it is worrying that we do not allow people to access the optimal coverage to which they should be entitled.
The Bill is simple and would achieve two things. First, it would allow mobile phone subscribers in this country the right to roam. If their home network did not offer a strong signal, they would be flipped automatically to the next strongest available signal. Secondly, it would encourage mobile phone operators to share masts throughout the country so that they had the same equipment.
Bring an end to those cut-off-on-the-train blues.
In my latest Times column I joked about purchasing London Labour Briefing when I was a student, and how I worried that some parts of the right were inclined to this sort of sectarian nonsense.
My friend Stephen Pollard proudly told me he had been "Class Traitor of the Month" in Briefing.
Well, I can now go one better than Stephen. The think tank Reform has declared me "Reactionary of the Week". You couldn't make it up.
I am not sure if a Tory intends "reactionary" to be an insult or praise. But I wouldn't want to be rude so just in case - thanks guys.
The reason for this award is my argument that: Any sensible decentralisation of health or education is going to cost more money before it begins to save anything.
Reform argue that this is wrong. They say outside suppliers will cost less and: a meaningful reform drive will put downward pressure on the (now massive) costs of pay, pensions and capital. A reforming government can make immediate progress.
I think this hopelessly optimistic. And an unnecessary argument for Reform to put. They are a reform think tank, not the tax cutters think tank. Again, these are not the same thing.
I believe strongly in reforming public services and would begin with this rather than make immediate tax cuts the priority. Surely Reform should agree with this rather than the wish fullfillment idea that it can all be done at once.
I watched Michael Portillo's Thatcher programme last night. And I agree with Iain Dale - very good it was too.
For me, though, the best moment had little to do with Margaret Thatcher - it had to do with Michael Howard.
Why did Michael Howard start his leadership with a modernising speech, end it by promoting David Cameron and George Osborne in a way designed to help them grab the leadership, but in between turn to a core vote strategy?
Ever the clear thinker, and pressed skilfully by Portillo, Howard answered this question.
He had, he said been aware of the modernising argument from the beginning. And he understood its attractions. But in the end he found it impossible to be a modernising leader.
He said that he just couldn't believe that the core issues he knew people cared about - ones that he cared about too - wouldn't move their votes. And he had, he felt, to be true to himself. But now? He supported modernising. He realised, he said, that he had tested the alternative theory to destruction.
Why - apart from filling in a little bit of Tory history - does this matter? Two reasons.
First, it shows that modernising is something you are not something you say. There was - Michael was quite right about this - no point trying to present modernising plans to people who weren't modernisers in their bones.
You have to believe a modern Tory Party to be right, right on the issues, right for the country. It is no point simply understanding intellectually, as Michael did, that modernising might help politically.
Second, it demonstrates that there are some pretty bright people out there - Michael Howard and William Hague are super bright - who don't make the Fundamental Heffer Error. They are able to distinguish between what they wish the electorate to think and what they do think.
Having for some time believed that he was right that the voters shared his exact way of looking at things, Michael now accepts that they don't.
If only more Tories were in this position.
As the Portillo programme argues, to continue to advance the same ideas and hope to get a different result is bonkers.
Ryan Lizza's engrossing portrait of the McCain campaign, penned for this week's New Yorker provides a very good description of the candidate's style.
But there is more.
He also talks of the way that McCain's victory subverts the established order. At the same time as McCain's accidental victory (well described by Lizza) conservatives are beginning to rethink traditional party thinking: [Newt]Gingrich, [Mike] Gerson, and [David] Frum all reject the anti-government ethos that has come to define conservatism. Gingrich calls for managerial competence in government. Gerson asks for expanded programs to fight poverty at home and to combat AIDS abroad. Frum recommends making peace with the realities of the welfare state.
Other conservatives have attacked these views, and perhaps the Frums and Gingriches are simply out of touch with the grass roots of their party.
However, these disputes also suggest that McCain, if he can tame his right-wing critics—and Mitt Romney’s endorsement last week will only help—may have a rare opportunity to reinvent what it means to be a Republican.
As I have argued elsewhere, McCain's candidacy and this new thinking could be of huge importance in the battle to change the Tory party.
As I wrote in my column this morning, tonight is an important intellectual event.
David Willetts is delivering the Oakeshott lecture, attempting to map out new arguments for Conservatives.
Willetts has always talked not of compassionate conservatism but of civic conservatism. Tonight he explains why.
Compassionate conservatism is a phrase coined by Marvin Olasky. An American Christian, Olasky argues for the role of faith in helping solve social problems. It influenced President Bush to establish his Faith-Based Initiative and provided him with a rhetoric to show that conservatism was not a harsh philosophy.
David Cameron now uses the phrase compassionate conservatism too. But, shorn of its religious connotations, what does it really mean?
Danny Kruger, a Cameron speechwriter, had an admirable go at explaining in Prospect.
But Willetts’s approach is different and, I think, more satisfactory.
Compassionate conservatism requires a change of attitudes and values so citizens become more fraternal and more compassionate. Civic conservatism, like free market economics, proceeds from deep-seated individual self-interest towards a stable cooperation. It sets the Tories the task not of changing humanity but of designing institutions and arrangements that encourage our natural reciprocal altruism.
Want to read more about the foundations of the new civic conservatism?
Then start with Stephen Pinker’s The Blank Slate. This is an essential introduction to sociobiology.
After that, if you’re feeling brave, I recommend Ken Binmore’s Natural Justice. This book uses game theory to explain why humans developed cooperation as an evolutionary strategy and why understanding this is far preferable to airily professing abstract ideas of justice.
 Conservativehome reports on George Osborne's spending speech in which the Shadow Chancellor robustly defends his pledge to match Labour's spending.
Here is Tim Montgomerie's view: ConservativeHome has not been campaigning for Mr Osborne to drop his spending pledge. We never expected him to do that. It would be too politically embarrassing. Our campaign is to avoid another similar pledge.
Let's see if I understand.
We are being asked to take a view on whether to match Labour's spending plans in the middle of the next Parliament even though they haven't announced what those plans are yet.
How can anyone sensibly do that?
Fraser Nelson's blogging on the Spectator Coffee House site has been unmissable - particularly on details of welfare policy. I've been really impressed.
But, as you might expect, I didn't much like his latest offering on Tory spending policy.
First he argued that Cameron is doing nothing original in aping Brown’s spending plans. This pledge was made by Portillo in 2001 and Letwin in 2004. If the electorate didn't want it then, why should they this time? Or, to borrow a Cameroon analogy, if voters didn't want ham and cheese in the last two elections why would they go for more ham and more cheese now?
But this is quite wrong.
Both the Portillo in 2001 and Letwin in 2004 words are handily linked by Fraser to documents. If you follow the links you will see that, contrary to the above paragraph, neither Portillo or Letwin promised to match Labour's spending totals. They promised to match them on schools and hospitals, a very different pledge.
And this discovery reverses the impact of Fraser's paragraph.
Later in the same post he says this: Then, he’s [Osborne] free to do something the Conservatives in Opposition have not dared do since 1979: give the public more of their money back.
In 1979 the Conservative Party did not offer tax cuts (which they feared might undermine stability). They offered cuts in direct tax, paid for through increases in indirect tax. And that is what they delivered.
The total tax bill went up in the first budget as VAT went up.
George Osborne made his matching pledge rapidly because he needed to be prepared for an election that most thought would come within weeks.
The election didn't come. So most of the period covered by Osborne's pledge is a period during which Labour is in power.
Osborne doesn't need to make another pledge about the spending path of a Tory government for quite a while. It is ridiculous to ask him not to match Labour in future when we don't know what their spending path will be.
Tim Montgomerie has framed the new debate in the Tory party as being between hares and tortoises. He see himself as more a hare. The tortoises are the uber modernisers.
Which I find highly amusing.
Since the whole point of the hare and tortoise fable is that the tortoise won.
I haven't this much fun since Gordon Brown and the British National Party started arguing with each over who first came up with "British jobs for British workers".
Conservatives have objected to my contention (following the excellent Red Box) that they naughtily pinched the Pupil Premium (explained here) from Nick Clegg. Not so, they say. We thought of it first, they claim.
You know what? I think they are right.
The Pupil Premium idea is not a new idea. I first heard of it, as is true of many brilliant ideas, from Tory guru David Willetts when we were working together in the early 1990s.
And it popped up again in May last year in a speech by David when he was Education Spokesman. It might have taken the headlines save for the fact that he made a few remarks about grammar schools in the same speech.
In November it became a part of Tory policy, featuring in their Green Paper.
Which leaves the question of how to fund it. Nick Clegg says it requires a cut in the Working Family Tax Credit. Not so, the Tories reply. They argue that government already diverts more education money to poor areas - the Pupil Premium is simply a better way of doing it.
Whoever is right on funding, it's obvious that there is a strong area of agreement here between Clegg and Cameron.
Enough to give them something meaty to talk about?
 The Conservatives have pleased Simon Heffer with their welfare proposals. And I agree with them too. But I am very concerned with the language.
Conducting his early work for Newt Gingrich's Contract with America my friend, Republican pollster Frank Luntz, discovered very different reactions from voters depending on the language being used to describe Gingrich's ideas.
One finding, just to give an example, was that far more people supported "not giving" benefits to certain people than supported "denying" benefits to the same group.
Luntz made these sorts of langauge issues the subject of a recently published book - Words that Work.
Now look at David Cameron's words in the News of the World to describe his new policy: Far too many are able to work but simply don't. We all know there are jobs available. That's a disgrace. We'll end the something-for-nothing culture.
Wouldn't it have been better - a more modernising approach - to talk about "helping people into work". The policy might be tough but the language should surely have been about enabling.
Maybe I am wrong, but I'd like to think they did a little polling first on the best way of putting things. Did they?
Yesterday readers of the Guardian were sold a collector's item. I've held on to my copy. I hope you didn't throw yours away.
Polly Toynbee said something nice about Tories in general. And even about a couple of Tories in particular. Her piece wasn't all nice. It wasn't even mainly nice. But it went further than I can remember her going before.
The cause of her being momentarily really quite polite, was the publication of Who's Progressive Now by two of the best Tory MPs in the House - Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt.
The two MPs make a lunge for the term progressive, attempting to claim it for the Tories. And whether deliberate or by coincidence, this follows only a few days behind David Cameron's call for a Progressive Alliance.
The pamphlet is concise, it can be read pretty quickly and it is well worth reading in full. But is the exercise a worthwhile one?
Yes.
During the 1992 Parliament Tony Blair kept raiding the Tory language bank. The result was not just to make him reassuring to Tory voters, but also to make it hard for John Major to develop a distinctive message.
Clark and Hunt have done their leader a good turn.
A fun snippet in People today. Vivienne Westwood launched her Active Resistance to Propaganda manifesto at the Wallace Collection at the weekend, and reported that she is to address the Conservative Party at their Christmas party. “I’m going to influence them,” she said. “They will change.”
The mind boggles at quite what this change might consist of. Cameron decked out in bicycle chains? William Hague in punk-tartan? At the very least Theresa May should be able to count on some great new footwear.
Alice Fishburn
The reaction of the Co-operative Party to David Cameron's establishment of a Conservative Co-operative Movement was desperately defensive. On their website they announced: - This is really a complete contradiction for the Tories who are the Party (sic) of the individual.
- The fact is that the Tories have always been the Party of private profit - not collective action.
- Under Tory Governments, the Co-operative Sector suffered - legislation left untouched for 20 years, they closed down the Co-operative Development Agency.
- It is easy for Tories to say they are interested in co-operatives but it is Labour that has the track record.
- It is Labour that has nurtured the establishment of more co-operative organisations over the last 10 years, from Co-operative action in education to Football Supporter Trusts, to Foundation Hospitals, to Housing Community Mutuals. In all, there are over 1 million new members of these co-operative organisations as a direct result of Labour support.
- Labour has re-invigorated co-op legislation and continues to do so and is supporting community co-operatives through the Office of the Third Sector.
Not one of these points is remotely relevant and a number don't even have the merit of being true.
The reason for this defensiveness is simply - Cameron has made an existential challenge to the Co-op party.
If the party is not able to welcome the adoption of the co-op model by other politicians, what is the point of its continued existence as a separate organisation?
It's perfectly reasonable for them, of course, to critique Cameron's proposals. They can argue that his model is badly thought out or not truly co-operative. Or something.
But to reject the very idea of them makes the Co-op party pointless and hypocritical. They are no longer acting as promoters of the co-op idea, but merely as a Labour front.
Is there anyone in that party with the imagination to do better? It can't be beyond their wit to encourage co-ops, push Cameron's idea along and still support Labour.
Or can it?
In a thoughtful post, Iain Dale is concerned about one possible consequence of forcing Nigel Hastilow to apologise or resign over his comments about Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech: It may well inhibit them from saying anything at all which can be considered as deviating even slightly from the party line. If that is indeed the effect, it may well give CCHQ fewer sleepless nights, but it will mean we are developing a factory line of androgynous politicians.
I am concerned about politicians becoming identikit figures, but not so concerned that I share Iain's worry on this occasion.
Quoting Enoch Powell's speech is wrong and stupid. The Rivers of Blood speech was inflammatory and offensive, even at the time.
This is the key point - even at the time.
It can hardly have surprised Mr Hastilow that a Tory leader wanted an apology for saying Powell was right, given that after he made the speech Powell himself was forced to resign (and then left the party and urged people to vote Labour).
The question is not whether Hastilow is a racist but whether he is an idiot.
Today is the date of the election that wasn't. Last night the Conservatives released this poster to mark the occasion.
Political Betting meanwhile uses the event to advance the following theory. Was the swing in political fortunes all due to the Observer?
Alice Fishburn
While I was away, Simon Heffer wasn't. And he had this to say about Tory tax policy: They need to apologise for their own errors, some of them recent.
Just as an alcoholic cannot be cured until he has admitted to a drink problem, so too must the Conservatives admit to two spectacular acts of economic ignorance, and then move on.
The first is the notion that tax cuts cause "instability". This is as inevitably true as it is to say that drinking makes you drunk: it depends on how much, and in what circumstances you indulge.
I should let it go, I know. But, well, I can't.
First, while saying that "the notion that tax cuts cause instability" is a "spectacular act of economic ignorance", Mr Heffer also says that it is inevitably true. I am not sure I follow.
Second, in any case, the argument put by the Tory leadership is not that tax cuts cause instability. It is that they will always put stability before tax cuts. This is a quite different point. Indeed, to use Mr Heffer's own metaphor, the leadership is saying that while they like a drink, there may be moments when it is not appropriate to have one.
And there may be circumstances in which the choice - which first, tax cuts or stability - is a real one.
Take 1979.
When the Thatcher Government was first elected it decided it had better not cut taxes because this would not aid economic stability. So it increased taxes in the short term.
Given both his history and the very words on the page, it is obvious that Simon Heffer agrees, rather than disagrees, with the proposition being put on stability and tax cuts.
But he so dislikes "Dave" that he doesn't want to admit it.
On the radio this morning Norman Smith of the BBC said that Nick Clegg was the last person Tories want to see winning the Lib Dem leadership.
And he's probably right. But are Tories correct to take this view? I don't think so.
Here are my four reasons.
First, the fate of the Conservative Party is in its own hands. If it is a moderate, reasonable attractive group ready for Government it will win votes and there is little that any Liberal leader will be able to do about it. So Tories shouldn't care who the Lib Dem leader is, being instead dedicated to making the identity of that leader irrelevant.
Second, the impact of a more attractive Liberal Party is unpredictable. It might, indeed, draw votes from the Conservatives, but it might also act as a place for disillusioned Labour voters to go if they are unwilling to go so far as supporting the Tories. Clegg is clearly the most attractive Lib Dem on offer, but this doesn't just impact on the Conservatives.
Third, the creation of a Lib Dem-Labour axis encouraged tactical voting against Tories. Clegg is against such an axis. He won't want to encourage tactical voting against Tories both because he is temperamentally disinclined to do so and because the atmosphere that creates inside his own party would make a coalition deal even more difficult.
Fourth, and most important, although Tories have very big disagreements with Clegg, he talks openly about the problems of big government, state interference and monopolies in health and education. His election would help to shift the centre of gravity in the political debate towards the freedom loving right. This would be a very big gain indeed.
Here is a Clegg speech delivered earlier this year on the future of politics. It is 25 minutes long, so you probably won't want to watch all of it, but watch the beginning to get a sense of his personal style and the way he frames his argument.
Do the Tory figures on inheritance tax and the so-called non-doms add up?
I've no idea. And I don't care.
During the last few election campaigns we have had to endure extremely boring and irrelevant debates about whether the cost of one action and the savings from another completely unconnected action are the same.
Irrelevant? Because the sums are relatively small and whether they match makes no impact on whether either of them can be done. As Jeff Randall points out in a superb column, Gordon Brown announced a range of initiatives in his speech and wasn't asked to cost them. Correctly. Why? Because is obvious that a growing economy can afford a few such changes.
Boring? Because the debate never reaches a conclusion and people can't be expected to understand the details.
If there is an early election, journalists should refuse to get sucked into this "figures don't add up" nonsense again. It is much more important to investigate if the policies themselves - changing inheritance tax for instance - are coherent and a good priority.
That would be a proper debate worth having.
 On Wednesday last week I declared myself an über-moderniser and set David Cameron some tests for his speech.
With the conference finished here's how I think they did against the principles I set out:
That optimism triumphs over pessimism. Both Cameron and Osborne's speeches were more optimistic than some that were made earlier in the summer, but this remains an area where a strategic choice is required. Fringe meetings were still full of incredibly gloomy, almost apocalyptic talk about the state of society.
When you talk about them, voters learn about you. Only the most grudging über-moderniser could fault Cameron's speech on the tone of his argument with the Government. Arguing that Labour means well and that the Tories therefore have to explain clearly why the Government has fallen short was just right. Other Conservatives were less good but this conference was definitely better than in previous years.
That to win, Tories must appeal to their core vote. The inheritance tax proposal was aimed squarely at the core vote, which I define as the upwardly mobile middle classes. It was a risk, but after a lot of opinion research they got the proposal right. I am less convinced about the marriage idea. Intellectually I worry about a tax break and politically I don't think it's a winner with women.
That brand decontamination comes before everything. I think Cameron did well in his speech on this. The passage about immigration, in particular, was well structured. The European section was too early in the speech but didn't drown it out.
That the danger is having too much policy, not too little. On the whole, the party preferred directional statements to micropolicy and I was pleased to see that. There were one or two moments, though when, for instance, a sweeping, but impractical sounding, benefits policy appeared out of nowhere, when I was a little concerned. I think also that NHS policy is less coherent than education policy.
That you must show as well as tell. I was worried about this. I suppose it was inevitable that less should be made of party reform at a pre-election conference, but it does mean Cameron would fight an election simply asserting that he is strong and modern. Why should voters believe that? So during a campaign he'll have to find innovative ways of demonstrating it. Not easy.
On the whole?
Cameron's speech showed he is pretty remarkable and that he gets it, or at least most of it. But the Party still has a long way to go.
I've just heard of a great quote from William Hague. Talking about a recent trip to Iraq, he said: We went to speak to a squaddie who’d been blown up the day before, so I remarked the only thing worse than being blown up on a Sunday is to be visited by politicians on a Monday, to which he replied, "Actually, it’s on a par, sir"
Murad Ahmed
(Hat Tip: Laura Deeley)
Tim Montgomerie plays host to some of my words of advice to David Cameron.
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