Bruce Anderson: What the Conservatives lack is something to fight against

'Resisting socialism took a century to accomplish and ended with a complete victory ? and a bereft party'

Recent events have left many Tory MPs covered in bruises and sunk in gloom. Michael Portillo has always had the capacity to arouse passionate admiration; he has long surrounded himself with devotees who were so dazzled by his qualities that they were blind to his faults. Some 30 or so Portillista MPs are now feeling crushed and lost; most of them do not know where to turn.

Some other MPs who voted for him are almost equally dismayed. Not Portillistas, these are Portillo supporters on this side of idolatry, but they draw a depressing conclusion from his failure. "Michael is bloody clever,'' they will say, "and he's been involved in politics for 25 years. He knows how to project himself, and he can speak. So if he can't get his message across, it's a poor lookout for the rest of the party."

That does not necessarily follow. The failure of the Portillo campaign is one of the most interesting political mysteries of recent years; the explanation may lie more in psychology than in psephology. But the whole affair revalidates one of the oldest political maxims: never go into battle under a leader who is not committed to victory. It is now unclear whether Mr Portillo really wanted to be leader of the Tory party. It did seem that he was only prepared to run for the job if he could luxuriate in self-doubt all the way to the winning post. That was never a realistic option. The Conservative party would always have treated such self-indulgence as an insult to its self respect.

Mr Portillo may not have won the vote, but he did succeed in infecting many Tory MPs with irresolution. In that deplorable condition, they are drawing two false conclusions about their party's necessary next step. "If only we could put Europe on one side,'' they are saying, "we could then be positive.'' Those two statements are in danger of becoming conventional wisdom, yet one of them is wholly in error while the other needs to be heavily qualified.

No one can put Europe on one side. The euro is the biggest issue facing this country. If we were to join it and it were to work, this would lead inevitably to the creation of a European federation. Kenneth Clarke knows that, which is why he supports the single currency.

There are honourable arguments in favour of a federal Europe – though most Tory Europhiles would prefer to cloak their ultimate goals in intellectual dishonesty. But there are no honourable grounds for evading the issue. It is the greatest question on the agenda, for it would have the most profound effects on the way we are governed, and on our ability to govern ourselves. A political party, which cannot discuss the euro, is a political party, which ought to be ashamed of itself.

This does not mean that the Tories should spend all their time on Europe. During the last parliament, the issue was prematurely dominant in Tory politics, which did obscure the rest of the party's message. It is vital that the Tories should broaden their appeal, especially on public services, and stress their positives. But the negatives are also important, for the Tory party has always been a negative party, which is its greatest historic strength.

It can plausibly trace itself back to the court of Charles I during his Oxford exile – and what is Mr Portillo if not Charles I with brains? Around that time, Lord Falkland came up with one of the earliest and most enduring expressions of Tory wisdom: "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.''

But the modern Tory party was created in the 1790s when it came together to resist the French Revolution: an uneasy coalition between Pitt the Younger's politics and Edmund Burke's philosophy. Burke defined the essential task of modern Toryism: to resist every attempt to convert Enlightenment theories into political practice. The devotees of the Enlightenment will invent some marvellous scheme to emancipate all mankind. But whenever those generous, liberating plans come into conflict with real men and actual events, there is an attempt to impose them in the most brutal fashion.

Throughout the 19th century, its scepticism honed by the 20-year war against the Jacobins and Bonaparte, the Tory party sought to slow the pace of change. This helped to ensure that in Britain, unlike most of the rest of Europe, such changes occurred by evolution, not revolution.

There was one brilliant exception. In 1867, Disraeli put himself in the vanguard of change over the second Reform Bill. Did he merely want to dish the Whigs and seize power, or did he realise that by then, it was necessary to change – or both? We will never know his real motives; Benjamin Disraeli was an even more complex character than Mr Portillo, to whom he is often compared.

Post 1867, it was back to negativism. The Tories quickly faced a new challenge: resisting Socialism. That took a century to accomplish, and ended with a complete victory – and a bereft party.

The Tories had libraries full of anti-socialist rhetoric. Every Tory politician could expound the West's case in the Cold War in his sleep, and some of them regularly sent audiences to sleep while doing so. But suddenly, all these crucial causes and vital insights were relegated to political archaeology. In the aftermath, the Conservative party has not succeeded in reinventing itself.

The euro could help. It is merely the latest enlightenment project to be imposed on an unwilling mankind. If a referendum were held now in the countries which are due to lose their currencies next spring, precious few electorates would vote in favour. But they will not be given the chance.

The British Europhiles wished that they were in a position to deny their voters the chance. Ken Clarke has gone on record as admitting that his greatest political regret is ever agreeing to a referendum. But they are stuck with a referendum, so the next best alternative is to ensure that the "no" case is crippled because the Tory party is weak and divided.

The euro is the only major issue on which a majority of the population agrees with Tory policies; there is no reason why the Tory party should not use a referendum campaign to reconnect itself to public opinion. So if Iain Duncan-Smith became leader of the Conservatives, one of two things would happen. Tony Blair might decide that as the political circumstances were no longer propitious, he would not hold a referendum. In that case, the Tory party would have the chance to concentrate on its other policies.

If Mr Blair did press ahead with a referendum, a united Tory leadership could fight a vigorous campaign and gain political momentum. As so often in Tory history, the negatives and the positives could come together with freedom as an integrating theme. Most other Tory policies would be aiming to increase individual freedom – and few freedoms are more important than the right to retain one's own currency.

Most Tory MPs are now on holiday: a chance to recuperate. They need to let the bruises heal and the gloom lift, to forget about Mr Portillo and to address themselves to the real opportunities available.