Steve Richards: The Tory right should be patting their leader on the back, not kicking him around

How are the Conservatives responding to the start of the Brown era? At first, a lot of them appeared to panic when an MP defected and Labour stormed into an opinion-poll lead. Yesterday some Tory MPs were on a high after David Cameron's authoritative and sure-footed performance during Gordon Brown's first Prime Minister's Questions. In the space of a week, fleeting panic, followed by renewed self- confidence, suggests that the Tories are living through febrile times.

The reasons for their oscillating moods have much less to do with the impact of the new Prime Minister than with the apparent evasiveness of the Cameron project. What really drives Mr Cameron as a political leader? What does he want to do with power if he were to win the next election? The answers to these questions are not obvious.

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Some Conservative MPs and right-wing columnists conclude already that Mr Cameron has left them behind on his political journey. One former Cabinet minister, who used to know him well, tells me that the Conservative leader views his party with disdain. He notes: "At least Blair said every now and again that he loved the Labour party. Cameron never does that with us".

In relation to grammar schools, his so-called hug-a-hoodie approach to crime, his apparent zeal for green taxes, his support for civil partnerships and the rest, some MPs and activists fume over what they see as a leap to the left. At the Conservative-related summer parties in Westminster, there is a hint of impatient desperation in the air. The MP, Edward Leigh, has been the most publicly vocal critic, but he speaks for a range of Tories.

Yet they are ungrateful in their frenzied disapproval. Take a close look at Mr Cameron's leadership and the right has plenty of reasons for patting him on the back rather than kicking him around.

Most immediately, the author of the controversial speech on grammar schools, David Willetts, has been removed from his post. The dissenters have won. In the mid-1990s, several Labour Shadow Cabinet members clashed with the grassroots. David Blunkett was jeered by the teaching unions. Stephen Byers was vilified for suggesting that Labour needed to break the union link. Rather than demote them, Mr Blair gave them more prominent roles. At the first whiff of gunfire, Mr Willetts is removed.

Mr Willetts has cause for grievance, rather than the grumpy right-wingers. His speech was a perfectly pitched argument for a modern Tory party, cleverly building on Mr Blair's Conservative-inspired reforms. Mr Willets proposed more sweeping freedoms for city academies, a proposition too far for those of us who fear that some of the eccentric owners of these schools have too many indiscriminate freedoms already.

But my concern proves Mr Willetts's speech achieved the much sought-after hybrid, impressing progressives in parts with enough meat for right-wing Tories who want the state to withdraw further from education. Apparently there was not enough meat and Mr Willets is with us no more. The pro-grammar-school right should be raising their glasses.

They should raise their glasses again for other reasons. Mr Cameron speaks often and in genuinely original ways about his concerns for quality of life and the need for employers to be more family-friendly. He has spoken sensitively also about the causes of crime. But again, take a closer look at the policies. Mr Cameron calls for a smaller state. Right-wingers such as John Redwood are examining ways of cutting regulation rather than looking at new regulations that would compel employers to improve the work/life balance.

It is true that Mr Cameron promises no "upfront tax cuts". The deceptive phrase means that they do not have the confidence to argue for tax cuts in advance of an election, but will introduce them afterwards. In terms of crime, the shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, could not have been clearer. The Conservatives will build more prisons, an echo of the policies that used to get ecstatic cheers at their party conferences in the 1980s and 1990s.

Wherever you look, the Conservative newspapers and the party traditionalists have little cause for concern. On Europe, Mr Cameron calls for a referendum and plans to leave the centre-right grouping in the Brussels parliament. In relation to the environment, the Conservative front bench did not vote in favour of the higher air-fare taxes introduced in the last budget. On tackling poverty, Mr Cameron offers a traditional Tory view that a strong family is the key.

What Mr Cameron has done is presented traditional Tory policies in a modern setting, to revive John Prescott's famous phrase. Mr Prescott's description is much more suited to Mr Cameron's project than Mr Blair's. In some ways, usually for the worst, Mr Blair challenged Labour's values as well as the policies that once accompanied them.

Mr Cameron's critics argue that his leadership is all spin, a marketing exercise, as Quentin Davies put it as he switched to Labour. On one level, Mr Davies is correct, but I do not condemn Mr Cameron for attempting to find new ways in which to project policies. Presentation is part of politics, finding new ways to make the values of a defeated party more attractive.

Mr Cameron is vulnerable for more substantial reasons. The first relates to his party. From 1997 to 2005, the prejudices of the Conservative rank and file were caressed rather than challenged. The activists had no Neil Kinnock to drag them into the modern era. The latest parliamentary intake, selected as candidates in the pre-Cameron era, is more right-wing than those elected in previous elections. Now they moan complacently at Mr Cameron's imaginative efforts to find new ways of presenting a set of policies that are still based firmly on the right.

It is the hardest task in British politics to devise a set of policies that satisfies traditional supporters while appealing to the wider electorate. Labour had the space to do so in the mid-1990s partly because of the collapse of the Conservative government. But Blair/Brown also had a head start because of the years of agonised reform that preceded their accession. Mr Cameron bids for broad support by speaking of progressive social objectives while deploying right-wing means. He calls it social responsibility. So far, his attempted synthesis has confused some of his supporters without winning over enough from the centre-left.

Am I right that Mr Cameron seeks to present traditional Tory values and policies in a modern setting? Or are some of his restless MPs correct in their fear that he marches to the left? Presumably his policy review will provide the answers. The outcome of the review will be the pivotal test of his leadership. Performances at Prime Minister's Questions matter. The credibility and coherence of a party's policies matter much more.

s.richards@independent.co.uk

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