“We won the economic argument but lost the culture wars.” Or so the post-Cold War Right often claims. But, viewing the apparently inevitable return of Britain’s Conservative Party to government, we might ask whether we actually did as well as all that.

With Boris Johnson’s mayoral victory and the Crewe and Nantwich by-election in the bag, the Conservative Party is preparing for power. Its Parliamentary ranks betray the quiet yet undisguisable sense that they are on the homestraight. To their opponents they boast that they have successfully “detoxified” the Tory brand, while complainants on their own side are told with a nod and a wink that Margaret Thatcher was not Margaret Thatcher until she came into office. Ignoring for a moment the historical nonsense of this, the success of “conservatism” only once disguised or neutered demonstrates a serious ideological victory for the Left. It is true that at the next British general election we might have a Conservative victory, but on the party’s present showing it could not be a victory for conservatism.

The Cameron project has already conceded that a conservative party will only arrive in government again if it is not conservative. It must not sound conservative or look conservative. More importantly it must not argue for policies that are conservative. So for instance there could be no talk of tax-cuts, hawkish foreign policy, immigration or Europe.

The strategy supposes that any conservative-orientated change which might improve the running of our economy or public services should either be resisted, or held in reserve and sprung as a surprise after the public have done the decent thing and voted the party into office. The idea that they will either have the gall to do the latter, or remain in power if they did, seems not to have occurred.