The difficulty is that if Party unity is made the great imperative above everything else then the Government loses any sense of direction. The status quo is continued by default.
In his youth he was mocked for being weird, but in middle age he upholds conventional wisdom.
Doing the minimum possible on legal migration would have the unwelcome effect for the Prime Minister of prolonging and intensifying debate about it.
The Prime Minister will want to avoid the trap that Gordon Brown created for himself in the autumn of 2007.
Gove, Cummings and the Federation of Conservative Students are also denounced for destroying her hero.
The State Opening of Parliament went off immaculately, but the debate which followed sounded staged too.
We hurl abuse at here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians and their advisers, while the permanent state flourishes like a green bay tree.
Did those in power still believe it was right to terrify the nation into submissions with their fear-mongering campaigns warning us to stay away from our loved ones? And why did the rules constantly change and at very little notice?
if you look at the odds for the next Conservative leader, there are no white men among the front runners. The top five comprise Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, James Cleverly, Suella Braverman and Gillian Keegan.
His critics think he is “a busted flush”: how eager he will be to demonstrate that he is, on the contrary, serious.
My hunch is the next generation of aspiring leaders will have a firmer grip on the meaning of conservatism than the current crop. Or, at least, I hope so — otherwise there might not be a party to lead.
It’s past time that mainstream Tory politicians recognised these realities and engaged with it as an opportunity rather than as the broadcasting equivalent of a leper colony.