For all their talk of modernising, the Tories just can't say no to a scrap

Why are senior Conservatives knifing each other in the back? What great issues are rousing them to new levels of apoplectic fury?

Let us start with the case of the former party chairman, David Davis. With good cause, he is livid at being demoted while sunning himself in Florida. When he set off for his holiday he assumed he would be returning this weekend to mount a headline-grabbing "summer offensive" against Tony Blair and his mighty government. Instead, Mr Davis is reduced to mounting an all-year-round offensive against John Prescott's plans for local government. His friends, aggrieved at the vicious briefings against him, are reported as saying that the party had to stop "gnawing its own limbs and consuming its own vomit".

But wait a moment. The enemies of Mr Davis take a different view. One Shadow Cabinet member told me that as a party chairman he had the following faults: he viewed his leader with open disdain; failed to travel around the country extensively, visiting local constituency associations; took little interest in raising funds from business; was brusque and impolite, failing often to return phone calls from important figures; and was rarely available to defend the party in the media at times of crisis, and with the Conservative Party there is a crisis of one sort or another most of the time.

I am reminded of Basil Fawlty's reaction when the hotel inspector announced a never-ending series of problems with his hotel: "Apart from that was everything else all right?" If Mr Davis asked that question of his opponents the answer would be an emphatic: "No! Everything else was not all right." Apparently he was guilty of another fault: he was opposed to the "modernisation" of the party.

But what does Mr Duncan Smith or anyone else mean by "modernisation"? The leadership is keen for symbols that convey the sense of a party entering the 21st century – a woman chairman, lots of women and ethnic minorities in any photo-call, press launches in Bradford. Still the question has to be asked: what do the symbols symbolise? The Conservatives have got it the wrong way around, seeking symbols before they have established the principles and policies.

Even the symbols lack coherence. This was meant to be a "modernising reshuffle", yet one of the Shadow Cabinet's leading modernisers, John Bercow, was demoted. Mr Bercow moves from the relative obscurity of shadow chief secretary to the Treasury to the total obscurity of being "deputy" shadow pensions secretary. He is not just a shadow, but a deputy shadow. I once received a telephone call from a Labour official who proudly described himself as the "acting deputy head of the rebuttal unit". He was not just a deputy, but an acting deputy. I doubt if Mr Bercow will feel a similar pride this weekend about being a deputy shadow.

His sin was to have taken the modernisation agenda seriously. Instead of seeking symbols, Mr Bercow has occasionally dared to mention policies. At one point he suggested that the Conservatives should be given a free vote on proposals allowing gay couples to adopt kids. Unlike the other parties, the Conservatives eventually decided to impose a three-line whip opposing the measure. Mr Bercow has also dared to raise issues such as the gap between the level of women's pay and men's. As a result, one of the liveliest modernisers – and also the best speaker on the Conservatives' front bench – has been punished in what was supposed to be a modernising reshuffle.

The guiding Tory principle seems to be that policies are not allowed to get in the way of symbols. Indeed, policies are not allowed to get in the way at all. The Davis case is a good example of this. Mr Davis was knifed and then given a less important job. Yet even this new job has quite big policy implications. For several years he has always had an alternative to John Prescott's regional assemblies. He is a passionate supporter of an English Parliament. He told me before the last election that not only was he an advocate, he also believed the establishment of an English Parliament to be inevitable. There was no other answer to the constitutional issues raised by devolution.

Does Mr Davis's new post mean the Conservatives are moving towards support for an English Parliament? This would be a dramatic move, generating both internal support and unease. But the Conservatives do not have policies. I doubt if Mr Davis's views on an English Parliament were raised when he was given his new post. There was a more important requirement. He needed to be humiliated.

Since the Conservatives' first landslide defeat in 1997 and even after their second electoral humiliation last year I have taken an unfashionable view of their condition. It did not seem to me to be especially serious. On most policy issues they agreed with each other. Even now, if we were to place Mr Davis, Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Portillo in a room together, they would more or less agree on the euro, tax and spend, the roles of the state and the private sector, and education. None of them has been ideologically challenged in the way Labour leaders were in the 1980s. Many of the most powerful newspapers are still instinctive supporters, ready to pump out propaganda on their behalf.

I am still inclined towards this assessment, that the Conservatives have a less daunting mountain to climb than Labour faced in the 1980s. Furthermore, with at least three years before the next election, Mr Duncan Smith is right to resist calls for easy headlines in which he proposes tax and spending cuts. He is right also to focus on the Government's reforms of the public services rather than the spending levels. Not even the most self-confident minister is firmly convinced that the reforms will work. If the spending levels and reforms are not making a tangible difference by the time of the next election, the Conservatives are theoretically well-placed to benefit. They are also well-placed to claim vindication if Mr Blair does not dare to hold a referendum on the euro.

But the Conservatives have a curious deathwish. They are not fighting each other over deeply held principles or policies. They are fighting each other out of personal animosity or hatred. Hague did not like Portillo. Portillo was disdainful of Hague. Widdecombe loathed Portillo. Half the Shadow Cabinet loathed Widdecombe. Duncan Smith was wary of Davis. Davis is livid with Duncan Smith. Half the Shadow Cabinet despises Davis. They are still consuming their own vomit, nearly choking their party to death. Yet their sound and fury signify nothing.