It’s crunch time for the Tories

on the day of last week’s debate on Iraq, senior Tories and business supporters gathered at the Dorchester Hotel for the annual Carlton Club fund-raising dinner. The turnout was impressive, with well over 200 present and more than £100,000 raised for the party. The guests wore black tie, though shadow Cabinet members, conscious of the need to return to the Commons, wore lounge suits. Iain Duncan Smith’s speech came at the start of the evening, so that he could make his early getaway.

Many of the guests, mainly chairmen and chief executives of major companies, had not heard Duncan Smith before. The Tory leader at once struck a false note by making a laboured comparison between his own difficulties and the problems suffered by Margaret Thatcher after she succeeded Edward Heath in 1975. He moved on into a piece of tub-thumping party-conference oratory. Even shadow Cabinet ministers made faces at the ceiling and felt slightly embarrassed. Duncan Smith’s speech lacked the easy intimacy that the occasion, with its well-disposed and high-powered audience, demanded. There were no laughs and only ragged applause at the end.

Afterwards there was ill-concealed dismay among the shadow ministers and party grandees present. They agreed that either Michael Portillo or Kenneth Clarke, the two losing candidates in the 2001 leadership election, could have done far better. There was plenty of talk, too, about low party morale. There were some acid comments about Iain Duncan Smith’s failure to provide a constructive opposition to British government policy on Iraq. Most of the MPs had been present at the 1922 Committee the previous night, where Douglas Hogg had led a barrage of criticism on this front. There was anger about the failure of the Tory party to exploit government mishandling of public services and other areas. In particular, there were ugly comments about the inability of Damian Green, the shadow education secretary, to strike a blow during the row over A-level fixing.