Yesterday ConservativeHome reported the latest attack on "Project Cameron" [sic] by the leader of the Cornerstone Group, Edward Leigh. It comments:

Writing for the House Magazine, Mr Leigh lists the ways in which Mr Cameron has offended traditional Tory sensibilities:

"This is the year that Conservative spokesmen have:

- Adopted Aneurin Bevan as a role model (he who vowed to destroy us and described us as 'vermin';
- Praised left-wing Polly Toynbee's view of society;
- Snubbed the CBI;
- Pleaded understanding for marauding hoodies;
- Announced that we, not Labour, were the real defenders of an unreformed NHS, the last Soviet-style, centrally-controlled health service in any large country;
- Rejected tax cuts, despite the biggest tax hike in peacetime history;
- Criticised grammar schools;
- Turned down the volume on Euroscepticism to the inaudible."

While praising Mr Cameron's personal qualities the Chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee warns that the party is in danger of "taking our core vote for granted and in the process effectively disenfranchising millions of decent people who feel that none of the mainstream parties speak for them." He continues:

"Our Euroscepticism is deliberately confused with crude nationalism, when in fact we want to help the Third World by breaking down trade barriers. And why did the leader's speech at the party conference not mention immigration at all, when in the last few years we have undergone the greatest-ever wave of increasing immigration into our country?"

Part of the reason Edward Leigh is listened to is because of his leadership of the forty-strong Cornerstone group of Tory MPs.

My colleague Peter wrote recently that such dissent smack of a man considering a move to UKIP. I'm not so sure - as one of the comments to that article pointed out, Leigh still has potentially a number of years left in the house and a responsible job; why would he chuck it in at this stage?

Yesterday, Julian H commented on these pages thus, and it got me thinking:

I'm unsure as to what the Right actually want. Surely they don't want a weakened Tory party being defeated by Gordo in 2009. So do they genuinely think they can oust Dave before then and replace him with one of their own AND win in 2009? If so they are deluded. If not - what is the plan? Get to a hung parliament and then force him out for not doing better? Or do they just want to be seen as being disapproving?

Cameron has had limited success in that he has raised the Tories out of their 30-33% box to 35-38% box, so adding around 5 percentage points. Yet, to form a stable government he needs the low forties. With Labour in such disarray it is understandable that the likes of Leigh are frustrated - Cameron's "touchy-feely" pseudo-liberalism has not delivered. Meanwhile, all the core values that he and many like him feel the Conservatives stand for have been rubbished.

So, to return to Julian's point, perhaps they do want Gordon to win in 2009. Cameron and his approach will have been proved wrong, and the right can reclaim the party. Perhaps they calculate that by the following election, four terms of Labour will have the electorate crying out for a dose of good old-fashioned Thatcherism.