The wrath of Mr Davis may signal a return to Tory faction-fighting

Mr Duncan Smith should use this year's party conference to set out his stall and vindicate his leadership

Back in 1972, when the Northern Ireland Office was established, a classicist was among the officials seconded from London. He had the right priorities. He decided that this new outfit needed a coat of arms with a Latin motto. Though the crest and the Latin are long forgotten, the English translation has not passed out of the minds of men: "It seemed a good idea at the time".

So did the appointment of David Davis as Tory Chairman. Mr Davis had been an effective whip, demonstrating that he was a good disciplinarian. He had kept away from the failures of the Hague regime, choosing instead to serve as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. In that job, he had weight and authority; not super-abundant qualities on the Hague front bench. One of the few Tory MPs who enhanced his standing during the 1997 parliament, Mr Davis went on to fight a creditable leadership campaign. He came nowhere near winning, but he did emerge as a potential leader-in-waiting.

It seemed wise, therefore, for Mr Duncan Smith to harness Mr Davis to his team. A positive reason was available for this: David Davis's political skills; and a negative reason: David Davis's political skills. The calculation was that a party chairman and a party leader have to work so closely together that their political fortunes become inextricable. Unless Mr Davis was seen to give his all on Mr Duncan Smith's behalf, his reputation would suffer. It could be, of course, that despite Mr Davis's best efforts, IDS would fail to establish himself, in which case Mr Davis might still be a candidate for succession. But he would only have retained his candidate status if he first put in those best efforts.

That was the assumption. It proved unfounded because it was based on an underestimation of David Davis, and on an overestimation. It underestimated his capacity to distance himself. It also overestimated his ability to do his new job.

Mr Davis is a complex character, opaque, perhaps, even to himself. An upbringing on a south London council estate, service in the territorial battalion of the SAS, a successful career in business, a Yorkshire constituency where his stubbornness can re-echo the locals' – this is a man who has long proved his ability and his toughness.

But a cost has been incurred. He has also been a man who has walked alone, warily, almost regarding trust in others as a sign of weakness. A colleague who worked with him when he was a minister of state at the Foreign Office described him as obsessed with his own career and locked in his own ego. He has never given the impression that he respected any one else's political judgement.

David Davis probably never intended to plot against Iain Duncan Smith. But he often seemed sardonically detached from his leader's fortunes. Above all, he never gripped Conservative Central Office.

I have been paying regular visits to that banal piece of architecture in Smith Square for the past 27 years and it has usually been a demoralising experience. While it would seem absurd to claim that buildings can suffer from depression, this one can certainly arouse it. Central Office ought to be the headquarters of a fighting machine, full of vigour and enthusiasm. Instead, it often seems faction ridden and mistrustful of the outside world.

All recent Tory leaders share the blame for this. None of them ever appointed a formidable chairman at the beginning of a parliament and told him to spend the next four or five years sorting the place out. Instead, most chairmen spent the first couple of years of the parliament poodling around while Central Office drifted, doing things in the way it always had done, which often meant mediocrely.

Then the chairman would be replaced by a front-rank figure to galvanise everything for the next election campaign; Cecil Parkinson, Norman Tebbit, Chris Patten. By the time they arrived, however, it was too near the election to start tearing the place – and its inmates – apart. The chairmen had to make do with what they had inherited. And so it went on.

It had been hoped that David Davis would deploy his many administrative, political and military skills to put matters right. This did not happen. Instead, Central Office was as confused, leaderless and unhappy as ever.

One interesting move was made; Dominic Cummings was recruited as director of strategy. Mr Cummings, a 30-year-old Geordie, is shambling, disorganised, disrespectful to his elders, clever, intense and full of flair. He had been running Business for Sterling, the anti-single currency pressure group, with considerable success. His arrival at Central Office was a culture shock; he is good at those. Mr Cummings was like a young general who had never experienced defeat, now posted to an army which had forgotten all about victory.

Hardly surprisingly, he found Central Office frustrating. When it comes to impatience, Mr Cummings is Pulitzer Prize class. But he was also guilty of failing to recognise the difference between running a small pressure group and working for a large political party in which things inevitably take longer. As a senior, and admiring, member of the Shadow Cabinet puts it: "Dominic never travels anywhere without a set of horns. He is always scanning the horizon for a china shop, so that he can put them on and charge".

Mr Cummings was an IDS appointment, not a David Davis one. The chairman made no attempt to meld Mr Cummings's creativity into the existing structures; indeed, he made no attempt to make those structures work more creatively. Nor was he sufficiently active in the constituencies, many of which feel neglected. By Easter at the latest, it was clear to Iain Duncan Smith and his closest advisers that it had become necessary to find a new chairman, and to employ Mr Davis's undoubted talents in a different capacity.

It was also clear to them that any such move would be furiously resented by David Davis himself. The way that the change was announced has been much criticised. In reality that is irrelevant. Making such a move would not have been possible without injuring Mr Davis's pride, and his vanity.

He has now warned Iain Duncan Smith of the risks of faction-fighting. But only one such risk exists: that Mr Davis himself will be so consumed by bitterness and wrath that he will establish a faction. Such a group would have no basis in principle or in policy: only in personalities and in pique. But the lack of a principled basis would not necessarily prevent Mr Davis from inflicting considerable damage on Mr Duncan Smith's leadership.

IDS has only one way of avoiding this: by sternly rejecting any descent into squabbling, coupled with forcefully asserting his own beliefs. A quarrel with David Davis makes it even more vital that Iain Duncan Smith should use this year's party conference to set out his stall and to vindicate his leadership.