The Sketch: The Tory cavalry are shell-shocked and out of ammo

Here's a sly piece of information that leaked out of the Treasury via one of those Tory ex-Chancellors who still hang around the palace of Westminster.

How he heard of it, I don't know. From the best Tory Chancellor in recent years, as we all say now, Gordon Brown.

You remember that the Conservatives announced 25 policy initiatives at their conference? The lunchtime information says that by the time of the next election, 23 of the Opposition's 25 initiatives will be government policy.

That says a very great deal about the state of British politics, none of it favourable to the Tories.

Why don't they have some policies that the government can't steal? The brutally stupid reality is that the Conservative leadership has less idea of what to do than they had five years ago. They are no further ahead in their policy development. They are not expecting to announce their policy plans for another year. They neither know what they will do nor how they will pay for it. They haven't found answers to the most basic rhetoric they've heard for the last five years. They have capitulated to their new masters. It's extraordinary that this leaderless rabble has any followers at all. And it's all lamentably clear on the floor of the House.

Treasury questions. The heart of government. This is where the reform process begins. You'd expect Tory horsemen to come whooping down from the hills with their sabres flashing, eager for slaughter. They are, instead, aimless, hopeless, helpless, bereft, demoralised, shell-shocked, confused, out of ammunition and armed only with hay-forks.

They complain about over-regulation and say that it's imposed a cost of £6bn on business. I've asked Conservative Central Office for examples of these regulations, in order to mock them. They had one. The new regulation about window repair. They'd got it from Boris Johnson's column in the Telegraph.

They won't do the work themselves and they can't get anyone else to do it for them. Robert Spink made a good point, at least it should have been a good point, but because he was a Tory it became a bad point. There is a manufacturing recession, he pointed out, but many government contracts were as yet unlet.

This is an excellent point; the inability to spend the capital budget has been identified by a Labour member of the Treasury Select Committee as one of the most interesting failures of this government. When, Mr Spink asked, would they get on with building the schools and hospitals they'd promised? (Labour uproar).

Whatever weight there is to that argument, the Conservatives still haven't got past "we want to put the money in and you want to take it out". The answer is so dulled by use that even a useless, pompous duffer like Paul Boateng can make it work.

Look, I had a very great deal to report on the distinction Gordon Brown draws between a cyclical and structural deficit and what that implies for the Growth and Stability Pact. But there's no time for that any more thanks to the rabble.

And look, living up to the Sketch's reputation for fairness, we have to praise the Speaker.

"I always get worried when the Chancellor leans on the dispatch box," interrupted the great Scots monologuist, "it makes me think he's going on too long."

How deftly put. And it allowed Tories to cry out: "Leaning!" whenever Gordon Brown did it again. That at least gave them heart. And, goodness knows, they need it.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com