This time last week I was worrying about our willingness to look for liberal ideas outside the party tradition. The mood of the times is liberal - and we should be staking out our territory.

Someone else has been trying to jump our claim (you may have noticed). I quoted Will Hutton on the problem faced by Cameron in his search for ideas:

The intellectuals from whom he might borrow to give his intent some ballast - Amartya Sen or John Rawls - are liberal.

In the Observer today, Cameron himself writes, eager to show that the Tories do have ideas. Indeed he claims that they have "big ideas".

You'll have to wait for that. First read the (pretty bold) claims Cameron makes.

We have set the terms of political debate, placing quality of life at the centre of political discussion, and putting environmentalism at the top of the agenda. On crime, we have combined belief in personal responsibility and effective criminal justice with a reassertion of the importance of tackling the causes of crime, and the imperative of family and community stability in the defence of order. In reclaiming for the party the concept of social justice, we have shone a spotlight on Labour's failure to live up to the hope of 1997. Despite undoubted good intentions, and spending enormous sums on welfare and public services, relative poverty has widened under Labour and the numbers of people in deep, entrenched poverty have grown.

Now this is open to question. Who is against "quality of life", "personal responsibility", and "effective criminal justice" after all? Cameron has made speeches on these topics. But you could be forgiven for thinking that these are a list of the things desired by focus groups.

I would need a lot of convincing that Conservatives as a whole are very sold on these sort of issues. And I am not convinced that Cameron means what he says.

In case you think I am too harsh, have a look at the headline to the piece: We are the party of class mobility.

The traditional tory approach to social mobiltity has been to treat it as a safety valve. A few are to be allowed to escape from the proletariat because otherwise social tensions would rise too high. But conservatism is above all about the preservation of privilege. And the pattern of the "modern" Conservative Party fits this mould precisely.

Yes they will have more female candidates at the next election, and a few more ethnic minority candidates. But don't let's pretend that this is going to open the door to people of a wider social background. You can be female and rich; you can belong to an ethnic minority and be educated at our most exclusive public schools.

The reality is that the Conservative Party is more firmly in the grip of a narrow clique of Old Etonians than it has been since the first half of the 1960s. They are imposing an agenda that the great mass of Conservatives are unhappy with, on shaky intellectual foundations.

Don't take my word for it. Here is the Big Tory Idea:

But the real story is more about the big idea at the heart of the modern Conservative party. That idea is social responsibility, the belief we are all in this together.

Fantastic, Dave. This really is a breakthrough.

David Cameron is now seeking to rewrite history - and reinvent himself as an opponent of the war. His 9/11 speech was aimed at distancing himself from Bush and Blair.

Certainly it was not quite a repudiatin of his precious views (accoding to the Guardian he made "it clear there were parts of the neo-con agenda he endorsed "). But it was a significant repositioning. In the wake of General Dannatt's comment we can expect more of it.

But Cameron's record is not just one of voting for the war. His views are on abailable in print.

On 26 February 2003 he wrote in the Oxford Mail

Saddam is an evil dictator, who has invaded his neighbours, terrorised his own people and gassed the Kurds.

He is in breach of 17 UN resolutions and has tried to build up weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq, the middle east and the rest of the world would be better off without him.

But are we justified in launching a pre-emptive war as opposed to deterring and containing him? Shouldn't we maximise the pressure on him and encourage the opposition within Iraq?

To answer that we need to address the question of whether he is a threat to this country.

There are two potential threats.

The first is that he could arm a terrorist group that could carry out a fresh 9/11-style atrocity. This is possible, but the evidence of links between him and Al Quaeda are weak.

The second is that he may use his weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.

He makes a nod in the direction of needing to be convinced, but you couldn't have inserted a fag paper between this view and that of the Prime Minister.

On March 19 he wrote again about how he had supported the Government and ensured that the country would go to war:

"In the great debate about Iraq I voted with the Government and the official opposition...to turn back now would be a disaster. It would break the US/UK alliance that has been the cornerstone of our peace and security."

We shouldn't let anyone forget it.

Tony Blair posted today in the Guardian's Comment is Free blog, examining the Conservative Conference:

The reason that they are making a virtue of having no policies is that they are still caught between the two wings of their party. The Tories want to postpone a decision on direction, but if we have confidence both in our achievements and future programme, they will be forced to decide. That will be their real test of leadership. There is no evidence from this week that they can pass it.

Blair may be wrong on many things, but on this he is right. Many warm and fluffy words may have been spoken, but nothing of any real solidity or substance emerged from Brighton this week. The reason for this is what has been characterised as the Cameron Conundrum: the centre of British politics may be liberal, but the Conservative Party and its core support isn't. Its irrelevant whether Cameron believes his platitudes or not; he can't please his core support and the people he wishes to convert at the same time. One might even imagine Mr Blair at question time, positing the following*:

“Why won’t they tell us? The Tories have got something to hide, but what? Is it that they are no longer the Conservative Party at all, and if so shouldn’t they be honest with their members? Or that Mr. Balloon does not believe a single word of his liberal rhetoric? There is a difference between not committing to tax cuts and not committing to a tax policy. Someone has something to fear from Cameron’s Conservative Party, but is it the right or is it the rest of us? You sweet talk the ladies with your commitment talk, but you make none at all. So tell us Mr Cameron who you really love or are you too weak to upset someone?”

[Update - I see Oliver Letwin is described on Question Time as Conservative Head of Policy. No wonder he has the time to be "something in the City"; he can't be over-worked!]

* - hat tip to Paul Lloyd for this "quote"

In my previous post, I speculated that the convergence between Labour and the Conservatives might backfire on them. Now Mark Pack at Lib Dem Voice points out some evidence that things are not going so well for David Cameron. In a YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph, Cameron's net approval rating slipped to 8% from 27% in February. Every positive rating for Cameron has fallen, and a majority of people believe that 'It is hard to know what the Conservative Party stands for at the moment'.

Cameron's appeal to his own party has been based on the notion that he can recapture the centre ground of British politics; moreover, that he can repeat the achievements of Tony Blair in securing election victories for his party. But, after a bounce in the polls after his election as leader of the Conservatives, the Tory poll ratings have stalled. After a few months of dominating the media agenda, Cameron's lack of anything real to say is leaving the public bemused.

In the last decade, the Lib Dems have done well by making honest, bold policy statements - openly calling for tax rises to pay for education and health in the mid-90s, for example. Now, the Green Tax Switch forms the centrepiece of a new agenda for tax which, if promoted honestly and openly, could find genuine favour amongst a public tired of hearing vague platitudes from politicians, and tired of stealth taxes rather than honest, simple taxes that make the tax burden clear to all.

Perhaps, after a decade of style over substance under Blair, the pendulum is swinging back in favour of principled, honest politics. And that leaves those who want to imitate Blair going in the wrong direction.