This will be Cameron’s finest hour — or the scene of a lynching

Just six weeks ago, David Cameron was enthusing to friends about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech to the Conservative party conference. The governor of California had been on the phone, saying how much he was looking forward to visiting Blackpool. It turned out that Schwarzenegger knew what he was in for, having toured England’s seaside towns during the bodybuilding pageants of his youth. Then, a fortnight later, he had mysteriously become too busy, and the supposedly relished visit was — well — terminated.

It is a fair bet that a British opinion poll found its way to Sacramento. When Mr Cameron first wrote to the governor, the Tories were ten points ahead. Now — according to a YouGov poll published on Tuesday — he is 11 points behind: and the word is that the notoriously image-conscious Mr Schwarzenegger did not want to grandstand on the deck of a sinking ship. According to one of Arnie’s advisers, ‘There’s just no way he wants to do this particular show any more. He’s an image man, and Cameron’s image is in the can.’ Ditto Rudy Giuliani, the Republican presidential frontrunner, who insisted he was not photographed with Mr Cameron when they met last week. In the pitiless eyes of such figures, the Tory leader’s stardust has been replaced by the aura of a loser.

All this makes a murderous backdrop for what will be Mr Cameron’s second, and possibly last, conference as Tory party leader. He was the future, once. Now we are in the extraordinary position where serious Tories talk about Mr Cameron being gone by Christmas, after losing an autumn election — and ask whether the Tory party would survive in its current form, or be torn apart by a modernisers-versus-traditionalists war. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that, if Mr Cameron fails, the party may face an existential crisis.