Like Churchill, Michael Howard understands that an opposition is a guerrilla force

Pompous, lobotomised-Lutyens details strive to rescue it from banality. They fail. Conservative Central Office looks like just another bog-standard 1950s office block. The appearance is deceptive. It is far worse than that. Whatever ‘bad karma’ means, Central Office has it. The atmosphere sets one’s teeth on edge, while encouraging the inhabitants to stab one another with hat-pins. The safeguarding of bureaucratic enclaves becomes the principal business of the day. There must be a dramatic explanation for all that malevolence. If the building were torn down, something unspeakable might be discovered in the foundations: a plague pit, or the bones of murdered children.

In view of this, many sensible Tories have come to the same conclusion over the years: evacuate the place. Thus far, such resolutions have always been sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. It was either too early in a parliament, with a new chairman still finding his way — or, once that chairman had been replaced, it was too close to a general election to contemplate an architectural reshuffle.

Then the Howard team arrived. It included two key figures who were well aware of the problem: Maurice Saatchi and Stephen Sherbourne, Michael Howard’s chief of staff. In trying to get a handle on Mr Sherbourne, some commentators have likened him to Alastair Campbell or Peter Mandelson. That is inaccurate. The best comparison is with Michael Fraser, ultimately Lord Fraser of Kilmorack, much the most important party official in Tory history — at least until now — who was at the centre of events for three decades after 1945. Black Michael had a dictum: ‘The backroom boys should stay in the back room.’ He took his own advice, as will Stephen Sherbourne, who could not be more different in temperament from Messrs Campbell and Mandelson. A gently-spoken, donnish figure with little superficial force of personality, Mr Sherbourne possesses a quality which has won the respect of those who know him, whatever their own brand of Toryism.