According to the Blair blueprint, a good-looking young leader and a "time for a change" mantra would deliver Tory victory in 2010. But it didn't. What went wrong? Without realising it the Cameroon Conservatives were using a script that was already going out of date. In the crisis of 2008 finance and the banks went bankrupt. Now it is politics — or the post-1992 approach — that has gone bust. This is not just a Conservative problem. All the large mainstream British parties are in trouble and do not know how to respond to deep unpopularity, public resentment and the erosion of traditional boundaries. The Conservative response seems to consist mainly of pointing out that Labour leader Ed Miliband and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg are more unpopular than David Cameron.

