Meanwhile, the Conservatives have revealed glimpses of their more profound understanding of our national interest. The Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has stressed the need to correlate defence, foreign policy and Britain's depleted economic resources, in a coherent national security policy. The global reach, and realism about the contemporary world, reflected in Hague's speech were salutary, contrasting with the make-do feel of Blair and Brown's wars of liberal intervention, under which the Tories should quickly draw a line. They are rightly more concerned about good relations with China and India than whether this country's foreign policy plays well with human rights lawyers or the NGO lobby.

The Conservatives might ponder something else that animates their voters. They know that this country faces a serious Islamist threat, which relies on the ambivalent loyalties of large numbers of Muslims in Britain. They seek to reap the economic rewards of living here, while regarding our civilisation as an unwanted option, an interlude before the onset of sharia and a society resembling a glorified souk. Some of them are allowed to engage not just in subversion but treason. The Conservatives should radically cut levels of immigration to a point compatible with our cultural identity. Instead of deferring to such media creations as the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, they need to fulfil their promise to create a border police to demolish the shady infrastructures which encourage illegal immigrants. What justification can there be for waging war thousands of miles away when you are not prepared to defend your civilisation at home, and even cringe before our own Taliban?