A simple test will do. Can we imagine how David Cameron, or George Osborne, or Theresa May, would react if an older-generation Tory, like Michael Howard, say, were doing what they are now doing? They would protest that such "toxic" policies were at fault for the party's abysmal ratings in the polls.

The modernising heroes have fled the field. D'Ancona is Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. Blue-sky thinker Steve Hilton has retired to California. Chief pollster Andrew Cooper has gone off to make money. Instead, Lynton Crosby, a political strategist whose every instinct is at odds with modernisation, has been recalled to save the government's bacon.

It might be objected that this is the sort of thing each new generation of politicians does: it criticises its predecessors, and then it follows in their footsteps. But these Tory modernisers cannot get off so lightly. They did not just claim to bring new policies. They claimed to stand for a different kind of politics. In any case, they could have actually done some good. Not all of their analysis was astray. They recognised that the party had to change. But they misread what was wrong and they mishandled the activists.

The Conservative Party was clearly narrowly-based and unrepresentative. But that was the effect, not the cause of the problem. By the last days of Major, the party no longer represented success, so successful people kept away. And so it looked like a rump — because it was indeed a rump. Rumps are not usually attractive. But the modernisers only made things worse when they kicked the remaining rump as hard and as often as they could.

They were right to want more women and members of ethnic minorities in winnable seats. But they got sidetracked by political correctness. They should also have wanted to see more successful businessmen and experienced professionals. But they were obsessed with youth, novelty and the opinions of the BBC. Candidate selection was soon corrupted and discredited by cronyism. The damage to relations between the centre and the local parties proved irreparable.