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.