Iain Dale has a surprising interesting article in the New Statesman.

He suverys the Tories on the eve of one of the few Tory conferences in the last twenty years when the first prioirty of a large group of delgates has not been to "dump the leader".

Not that this instinct has entirely disappeared. The Cornerstone Group are certainly restive (not least their bashful "leader" Edward Leigh). Indeed Michael Howard has been wheeled out in the Times to try to keep the Right on board.

Dale argues that Cameron will only go so far in appeasing the right: If the price of getting the extra two million votes needed to win an election is to lose a few thousand "scorched earthers" on the right, it's a price he's only too happy to pay.

And he pinpoints one of the sources of friction between leadership and activists in conservative party. Cameron is consciously promoting himself in opposition to his party. Not for the first time it is a tactic reminiscent of Blair:

A cult of personality has been consciously engendered. He, not the party, is now the Conservative brand.

This is a dangerous tactic. Cameron is clearly a Conservative by caste and education. He is trying to distance himself from the policies that (let's not forget) expanded the appeal of the Tories under Thatcher, and are dear to the majority of their activists. Yet Cameron has no scalps to show the party and justify this denigratin of their history and traditions. The only "win" under his leadership has been the good local election results. But these were not quite as good as the spin suggested - and owed a massive amount to unrecosntucted right-wingers at local level. Opinion polls have improved. But given the Lib Dem crisis at the beginning of the year, and Labour's infighting and scandals, any leader would have achieved some upturn in the polls.

As a result, (as we reported from Brighton) "(Conservative) Membership is still on the slide".

Dale's conclusion is that the Tories still have it all to do. Without policies then can be all things to all men - and to most members. But as policies emerge, the level of Tory angst will rise - or voters will recoil and realise that they are "still the Conxervatives".

And so Conservatives "won't mind if Labour's leadership woes take the spotlight off them for the next six to nine months. It is this period that will determine the outcome of the whole Cameron project. After the glitz and headlines of the first ten months, it's where the legwork will be done."

Which cheered me up frankly. We have been a bit low on glitz and headlines (at least the right kind of headlines) for most of the year. But the headlines picked up at Conference. and we have started dong the legwork.