May I make an argument which is so controversial that you probably will not have read it in a Conservative-leaning newspaper in 2010? Here it is: David Cameron is a successful leader of the Conservative Party.  The evidence for this proposition is simple – so simple that critics take it for granted and go moaning about him all the same. Since he took charge, more than four years ago, Mr Cameron has modernised his party and convinced voters that he and it are decent and relevant. His leadership is unchallenged, and his public presentation is good. He has pulled the Conservatives roughly 10 per cent ahead of Labour in the opinion polls, month after month, a consistent lead not known since the mid-1980s. If he can stick to this course for another two or three months, he will throw out a Labour government and become Prime Minister – the first time a Tory leader has done this since 1979.  One important factor in his success is not listening too much to us columnists or to our newspapers. We want fireworks, war-cries, blood on the decks. We are bored by strategy, consistency, plugging on. But we do not have to fight elections, let alone govern the country.  There was a time – much too long a time – when the Tory Party was so enfeebled that it allowed us in the media to lead it. I remember, when I edited this paper, asking William Hague, then the leader, to write an article for us (I forget the subject). He agreed. I was telephoned by a bright young man in his office called George Osborne. "What do you want us to say?", asked George. They were in too weak a position to have anything to say for themselves.  David Cameron, assisted by Mr Osborne, has changed that. They understood that the Tory Party had turned in upon itself. It needed to talk in a different way, about different things, through the mouths of different people, before voters would ever again pay it attention. All the stuff about gender, class, family, ethnicity and sexual orientation was not so much political correctness as noticing the variety of people who walked down the street and wondering why so few of them voted Tory.  Mr Cameron also understood that once he had embarked upon this course, it would be fatal to swerve from it. What would happen today if the renewed Conservative interest in the public services were suddenly to be cast aside by a devil-take-the-hindmost promise of a tax cut which no government, thanks to Mr Brown's profligacy, can afford? Such a switch would lose the Liberal vote which the Tories have wooed well in the South-West, and the Blairite Labour voters who matter in swing seats across the country. It should not surprise anyone that polls show the Conservatives doing two per cent better in marginal seats than in others. It is at those margins that Mr Cameron has been working, turning what was once a giant leap of allegiance for many voters into a small, painless step.  Look at the row about Joanne Cash, the candidate for Westminster North, who resigned last week, and was then reinstated with the help of the party leadership. Her fall-out with association officers was about whether her activists should be spending time with the social action programmes which she promotes – mentoring teenagers who need help when they leave school, for example – or attending solely to the "core vote". It epitomised the party tensions nationwide.  I know Joanne Cash quite well. I read in the papers that she is "metropolitan", and a sort of teacher's pet. Actually, she comes from a family of modest means in semi-rural Northern Ireland, and has made her own way in life. She is charming, yes, but not pampered. She is brilliant, determined, terrifying even. She strikes me as bearing some resemblance to a young woman whose first general election as a Conservative candidate took place 50 years ago next week. Margaret Roberts stood in the safe Labour seat of Dartford, where she brought her opponent's majority down from 20,000 to 14,000.  I mention Miss Roberts – better known to history as Margaret Thatcher – because currently discontented grass-roots need reminding that the great heroine of the true Tory faith was once a "moderniser", too. Her sex was held against her. She only got Dartford because three businessmen declined it. Later, she was turned down for seat after seat because, by then, she was married with children. Even when she was eventually selected for Finchley, a clique of locals, led by a woman, wanted her kept out for the same reason. Because of what people now call her "back-story" and her sex, Mrs Thatcher was a candidate of change. And, true-blue though she was, she won in 1979 because she offered change, and Labour offered more of the dismal same. So today, the Thatcher example comes down on the Cash/Cameron side of the argument.  Voluntary organisations are wonderful things, but no party that allowed itself to be ruled by the views of the volunteers could ever win. This is particularly true today when participation – for all parties – is sadly so low. By the time she left Dartford in 1951, Margaret Roberts had built up the membership of her local Tory association to 3,160. And that, as I say, was in a safe Labour seat. Poor Miss Cash, standing in a seat which she might well win, has inherited only about 500 members. The tribe shrank long ago: you have to reach beyond it. David Cameron has done so, and that is why he will probably win.  So is there anything Cameron should learn from all the grumbling which we in the media – currently bored by our earlier narrative of the total collapse of Gordon Brown – are headlining?  I would say that there is one thing, and it is summed up in a phrase which Mrs Thatcher made famous – "our people". This is sometimes taken to refer to those who vote Tory in all circumstances. It does not mean that. It means all those people whose dispositions, occupations and economic interests should lead the Tory Party to identify with them.  The Tories' "broken society" message is true, and right, but it should not forget all the people who have to pay the bill for the breakages – in tax, crime, mass immigration, schools, Accident and Emergency. It should not be so idealistic that it forgets the pocket-book of the middle classes, and those who would love to be middle class. The common experience of the past 18 months, new to many younger people, is that the Government is making us poorer. As a new Tory government gets to grips with the deficit, we shall, temporarily, get poorer still. All the more reason for Mr Cameron to show, now, more strongly, that he feels our pain and can lead us through it.
The Conservative Party leader is succeeding by promising change - just like    Margaret Thatcher, says Charles Moore