Take my word for it: only PR can save the Tories from the road to oblivion

Even if a ghost from the glory days of yesteryear were to emerge, it would not save the Tories from their current plight

New Year's Eve is a time for politicians to issue messages for the year ahead. Pundits, myself included, are also prone to forecast the political future – often with disastrous results. But as my colleague, Adrian Hamilton, correctly argued on this page yesterday, journalists have no business in forecasting the future.

In a previous life, as a politician, I learnt this lesson the hard way. At the turn of every year I would issue a message to my constituents, which would be copiously filed by my assiduous political opponents and reissued by them 12 months later with my howlers exposed for all to see. They also did it with my speeches in Hansard and ensured that every wrong call during the lifetime of a parliament would be duly exposed at election time.

But it is the lot of politicians to live much of the time in the future with judgements made on the basis of promises of jam tomorrow. The journalists who write predictions for the year ahead are lucky, however, in that any wrong call is often forgotten – even by the day after it is written when the article is subsequently consigned to wrapping fish and chips or used to line the budgie's cage. It is only right, therefore, that I own up to the howler I made at the end of last year when I predicted that the sun was finally setting on Tony Blair's empire. Sadly, I was wrong. The empire may be crumbling but the sun, in the shape of the latest opinion polls, still seems to be shining on it (if not on him) with remarkable brightness.

Early on in 2002 I was rash enough to predict that the Tories, under Iain Duncan Smith, were showing remarkable signs of unity and discipline when, under provocation from Baroness Thatcher over Europe with the publication of her book Statecraft, all sides – from Ken Clarke to Bill Cash – maintained a dignified silence. This ensured there was no distraction from the successful campaign launched by IDS, at the half-yearly Tory conference at Harrogate, in March, to put public services ahead of tax cuts.

He also outlined a credible policy to "help the vulnerable" and seemed to benefit from the breakdown in trust in the Government when the airwaves were filled with noises off from Martin Sixsmith, Jo Moore, "Mittalgate", and arguments over telephone calls to Black Rod about the Queen Mother's funeral.

Glowing comparisons were even made between IDS and Clement Attlee and, by early summer, when Stephen Byers was sacked, IDS was receiving encouraging write-ups that he was honest and trustworthy precisely at a time when the Blair Government was still obsessed by spin and the need to lie when it was in difficulty. For a few months many pundits on the right, myself included, predicted a slow but steady progress for the Tories. Our prediction was even underlined by a halving of Labour's lead in an ICM poll.

What we had failed to forecast was that all these gains would be recklessly tossed aside by an unnecessary and totally botched reshuffle which resulted in the disastrous decision to remove David Davis – who had in many ways delivered the leadership to IDS in 2001 – from the party chairmanship. On 24 July, I claimed that this would get big headlines for the perception it created of rows between top Tories. "The last 10 months of steady progress have been free of civil-war stories. IDS has taken a big risk in reigniting those stories. And we have not heard the last of Mr Davis."

We could also have predicted (and did) that the Adoption Bill and the wretched Clause 28 business had the capacity to cause mayhem for the Tories and we knew that the likes of Portillo, Maude and Bercow would use these issues to highlight the new divisions since the general election between so called modernisers and traditionalists. But we wrongly thought IDS had the capacity to steer through these waters by the use of a free vote. We never dreamt that he would panic with the plaintive call to "unite or die".

This was guaranteed to reopen the leadership question and we do not need the power of clairvoyance to recognise that this, rather than yesterday's new year message from IDS on education, will be the main talking point among Tory MPs and political commentators between now and the regional assembly and local elections in May. It is not much of a prediction to suggest that, if I write this column a year hence, it is possible that, by then, the Tories might have a different leader. Ask me to say who will that be? That really is a mug's game.

The mindset of Conservative MPs is confined, on this question, not to who would be the best person to beat Tony Blair at the next election nor even to who would be best for gaining more seats. At the moment, and certainly after the local polls in May, the sole objective of each MP will be to hold on to his or her own seat. The latest ICM and Mori polls suggest that the Tories could yet lose a further batch of seats. So personal self-interest will be the engine that will drive Tory MPs to a new state of panic.

But, even if a ghost from the glory days of yesteryear – a Churchill, a Macmillan or a Thatcher – were to emerge, they would not save the Conservatives from their current plight. For the truth is that the Tory party really is dying in the constituencies which they lost in 1997. Among the Christmas card messages I received from former party workers in Cleethorpes, here is one: "We had to sack Julie [the agent] as we could no longer afford her. There are no functions any more and nobody turns up to our meetings."

So what will save the Tories from death? Believe it or not, but it is more likely to be proportional representation rather than tax cuts. Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats hardly ever discuss PR – once an obsession at their conferences – which tells its own story. When the regional-assembly elections in Scotland and Wales are held, the odds of the Tories winning any constituency seats are practically nil. The Tory voice in both of these institutions will be heard – yet again – only on the strength of the PR element. At the point at which Tory support falls below 30 per cent, extraordinary magnifications of the first-past-the-post system operate to their severe disadvantage and to the advantage of the Liberal Democrats.

So the truly brave, aspiring Tory leader of the future needs to recognise that PR may be the best way of saving a party that looks so sickly under the current system. It may seem ironic that the party, which once had no truck with such a system, is now the one with most to gain from it. Of course, much ridicule will have to be endured. The disadvantages of central control that such a system gives to party headquarters is not one I would welcome. But the Tories in Parliament, if nowhere else, might consider anything just to survive.

So, I'll stick my neck out with just one prediction for 2003. PR will be back on the political agenda. And someone in the Tory party will put it there. Oh, and don't forget to throw this back in my face in 12 months' time.

mrbrown@pimlico.freeserve.co.uk