The Tories are reaping the reward for grinding work on public services

'Their new consensual style does not hide the yawning chasms in their empty policy chests'

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One swallow may not make a summer, but yesterday – the first day of spring – brought the Tories a much- needed boost with the ICM poll showing the normal stratospheric Labour lead almost halved. If nothing else, this will put a spring in the step of Iain Duncan Smith and his Shadow Cabinet colleagues as they head for Harrogate for this weekend's half-yearly party conference. "Making Life Better" will be their theme – and life for them is certainly much better than last summer.

Of course, there is always the risk of frost blighting the early spring blossoms, and the noises off from Baroness Thatcher and Francis Maude were distractions for the leadership. But the psychological boost to a new Tory leader of only the second serious poll setback in a decade for Labour should not be underestimated. On the previous occasion, when Labour actually lost their lead, the fuel crisis provided the Tories with their last short-lived burst of popularity.

Baroness Thatcher's comments provided momentary fuel for a potential new outbreak of hostilities inside the party, but the armed truce – not to stir the Europe pot, despite her intense provocation – seems to have held. One Tory MP, Andrew Mitchell, described her comments suggesting "renegotiation" of the European treaties as "those outrageous views we tend to expect from our favourite grandmother, whom we will nevertheless always love and respect – even when she talks nonsense after a gin too many". He thought it was ridiculous to suggest that there should be some kind of ritual purge and denunciation.

The simple truth is that Baroness Thatcher's shadow now reaches across far less of the Conservative Party than it does across the media. "Don't give them the oxygen of publicity", she used to say of the IRA. This should be the Tory response to her. That is not to say that the Tory party was exactly pleased with her book. But its more relaxed attitude shows that, although she can still grab a quick headline, she no longer dominates the party.

Those, including me, with long memories over the lady's past record on Europe see her, anyway, as a Johnny-come-lately convert to the cause of anti-Europeanism. My copybook was blotted, in terms of promotion under her regime, when I voted against her ruthless three-line whip on the Single European Act. Some Eurosceptic purists would say that she has blood on her hands because it was on her watch that we entered the Exchange Rate Mechanism – almost her last prime ministerial act before she resigned.

Of far more concern to the leadership should be the damaging speech last night by Mr Maude, who was giving the RA Butler Memorial lecture. He does believe in a ritual humiliation of the baroness, but he is not really fighting her so much as trying to goad Mr Duncan Smith. Mr Maude also repeats, in an article today in The Spectator, the Portillo mantra of last summer that the Tories face possible extinction. His principal argument is that although the party has faced annihilation in the past but then successfully regrouped, there is no automatic guarantee that, this time, it will automatically recover.

But he is stuck in the past as much as Baroness Thatcher is. In view of the latest poll, his timing – never his strong point – is wrong. He hints at the possibility that the Liberal Democrats could replace the Conservatives as the opposition, and while this might have been a threat during the bruising leadership campaign last summer, this risk seems to have been averted. In fact, the latest opinion poll shows that the Lib Dems have actually fallen two points since January. There is nothing new in Mr Maude's comments, which suggest that he is simply looking to make trouble for Mr Duncan Smith and his team because he still cannot believe that he and Mr Portillo failed to gain the leadership inheritance they believed was rightly theirs.

Some backbenchers even put money on Mr Maude being the first to call time on Mr Duncan Smith's leadership. It is unlikely, however, that he still holds a candle for Mr Portillo, who appears to have difficulty in even knowing where the House of Commons and its division lobbies are situated. Since he lost the leadership last July, it has taken eight months, until this week, for Mr Portillo even to utter in the chamber. Many suspect that his speech on the dispatch of combat troops to Afghanistan was only made because of gossip-column and tearoom tittle-tattle about his prolonged absences from the Commons.

Insofar as Mr Maude is right and simply stating the obvious in the need for the party to modernise, he is, however, pushing at an already open door. He would rather this was done by fireworks and declarations of open warfare on the elderly troops which still sustain the party in the constituencies. Mr Duncan Smith's is a more gradual approach based on quiet but firm persuasion through David Davis, his steely but outwardly charming party chairman.

And it is this tedious spadework in the Shadow Cabinet that may now be responsible for the uplift in the party's fortunes. Mr Davis himself was anxious to play down the significance of the poll, but says it reflects something more than just disaffection with the Government. Disaffection alone, he believes, would have benefited the Liberal Democrats; the actual rise in the Tory share is the reward for the grinding, painstaking efforts of the Shadow Cabinet's focus on public services. He also thinks that a disavowal of the populist approach that characterised the Hague/Maude/Widdecombe/Portillo policies before the last election is beginning to pay dividends. Tough lines on asylum and support for Tony Martin made good headlines before the election, but did not translate – except to reinforce the image of "skinhead Conservatives". Mr Portillo's proposal to cut fuel duty, albeit probably on the orders of Mr Hague and against his better judgement, was seen by voters as classic opportunism.

Oliver Letwin and Michael Howard, by contrast, have been more careful in their approaches to crime and tax, and both seem to have recovered from the dreadful reputations they endured before the last election. Of course, their new consensual style cannot hide the fact that there are yawning chasms in their empty policy chests, but they should be in no hurry to rush out lengthy tracts. The small early swallow of the latest poll, however, will now give the Tories the chance to be listened to again.

mrbrown@pimlico.freeserve.co.uk