But there is little evidence of a concerted plot to oust the leader. Most Tory backbenchers probably regret the decision of the party activists to elect IDS, rather than Kenneth Clarke, in the first place. The air is thick with loud mutterings against the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith. But Tory MPs and activists have actually lost as much confidence in themselves as they have in their leader.
The media frenzy against IDS is undoubtedly being stimulated by small groups of disaffected supporters of previously failed leadership contenders – aided and abetted by one or two anonymous MPs.

The Tory party is suffering a palpable crisis of confidence in Blackpool. If there are reforming politicians around, with the courage to set out an entirely new approach to the delivery of public services, the future could be theirs.Sir Christopher Gent is Chairman of the Advisory Board of Reform ( ) a Conservative think tank. Now they want to hear a strong, credible and positive alternative. Half of Britain’s voters no longer identify themselves with a party at all. Winning office means being able to appeal to at least some of this disillusioned group of voters They know tax and spend isn’t working. The dividing line in tomorrow’s politics will not be between spenders and cutters. It will be between reformers and those who cannot detach themselves from a system designed in the 1940s.The latest research shows that only a tiny portion of the electorate now strongly support a party.

We are spending record amounts, at or approaching the EU average, on education and healthcare. It is time to contrast the deal which our NHS patients receive compared with their fellow citizens in Europe.Real reform cannot be achieved piecemeal or by stealth, because it means fundamentally changing the rules of the game: breaking state monopoly; allowing new providers to compete for services; transferring the state’s spending power from producers to consumers, empowering them to make choices in the system.This is no longer an argument about how much Britain needs to spend on public services. Every country with first-class healthcare has a proper system based on insurance. Then it should tell us what its aims of a new system would be. In healthcare, that should be choice, value for money and ensuring that everyone, whatever their financial means, has access to quality healthcare when they need it.

Those aims should be put in the shop window, because those are the benefits that patients would get. Voters have become cynical because they’ve heard it all before They sense that the system is broken. An opposition party has to explain why the system delivers the poor results we see all around us; to establish the need for reform. Only politicians can change the system.Small, incremental changes are never going to be enough. The blame for poor performance is not ministers, or managers or employees, but the system.