My fight is for the British people

Iain Duncan Smith defends himself — and his wife — against the plotters and the smear campaign, and calls on the Tories to get on with the work of promoting freedom and choice

In the early years of the New Labour government, it was widely believed that the Conservative party was finished. Confined, apparently, to a rump of aging support, we were being written off as inappropriate to the new millennium. Not any more. People no longer ask whether the Conservatives will ever again form a government. They ask, with increasing impatience, when we will do so.

To answer this question, it is necessary to understand the positions of the various forces on the political battlefield and their states of preparation. In politics, personalities and tactics count only for so much; what wins is strategy — and ideas.

The Conservative party occupies two intellectual positions of strategic importance — positions that together dominate the landscape.