This country has embraced tolerance — or become more decadent, depending on your point of view. Either way, Britain has changed hugely over the past ten or 20 years. You can rejoice in the change (I do) or you can lament it. But what you can’t do is deny it.

Yet denial is what an increasingly small faction of the Conservative Party, goaded by the Daily Mail, is determined to indulge in. According to them, the socially liberal values that now extend to all parts of the country are merely the witterings of a metropolitan elite out of touch with Middle England.

Not just metropolitan, indeed. Some even claim that this outlook is confined to just two London postcodes: N1 and W11. William Hague, in 2001, was marginally more generous to the residents of Croydon, arguing that it existed only within the M25. But he was wrong then and would be even more wrong now.

What greater evidence do we need than the events of the past week or so? The Daily Mail runs two full-page leaders, one supporting Ken Clarke’s candidacy and the other demanding that David Cameron disclose every spliff that he might ever have smoked. The result? Voters and Tory activists declare that they couldn’t care less whether Cameron has inhaled, and MPs throw out Clarke on the first ballot.

If the Daily Mail thinks it has its finger on the pulse of Middle England, it had better consult a medical textbook.

Meanwhile, Newsnight commissioned an ICM poll, asking voters whether they would be more or less likely to vote Tory if they knew the party’s leader had smoked cannabis in the past. An astonishing 82 per cent said it would make no difference. And of those floating voters who said they would consider voting Conservative — the very voters the party needs to win back — 16 per cent said that they would be more likely to support the party if they knew the leader had smoked dope, as against only 10 per cent who were less likely to do so. If anything, they positively approve.

When I was at university, just a few years before Cameron, it seemed that only the nerds didn’t smoke joints. They tended to be the ones who thought it was cool to drink 14 pints of beer instead and weave their way down the street bawling rugby songs at 1am. We didn’t like them then; and we wouldn’t like them leading a political party now.

By contrast, the more interesting students dabbled in recreational drugs. Yes, there was the occasional casualty who got hooked on heroin, a drug that the rest of us would not go near. But of those who smoked dope, most are now lawyers, bankers, entrepreneurs, publishers, journalists and, yes, MPs.You only have to look at Cameron to know that he is no druggie. His mind is sharp. He is absurdly calm, composed and competent for a man of his age.

And nor is the electorate likely to care. For attitudes have changed dramatically, not just in the last 20 years, but in the recent past too. British Social Attitudes has been asking people questions about illegal drugs since 1983. Then 77 per cent disagreed with the notion that cannabis should be legalised, with 62 per cent disagreeing strongly. By 2001, only 43 per cent disagreed, and just 29 per cent felt strongly about it.

Even more startling, perhaps, are these findings. Asked about illegal drugs, “such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin” (my italics), people were invited to agree or disagree with the statement that “taking illegal drugs can sometimes be beneficial”. In 1995, not that long ago, 25 per cent of people agreed. By 2001, just six years later, 52 per cent did — quite a transformation.

This transformation, though, has passed the social conservatives by. When Michael Portillo stood for the Tory leadership on a modernising ticket, they derided him for his “pashmina politics”. They thought that only women in Notting Hill wore pashminas, whereas these scarves were being donned by millions of women all over the country. Now the anti-Camerons disparage his “aromatherapy” approach. Have they not noticed that there is an aromatherapist in nearly every town in Britain? Even the Mail touts aromatherapy on its Femail pages.

We are all children of the Noughties now. The Daily Telegraph, to its credit, finally accepts it. The nasty rump of the Conservative Party and the Daily Mail had better get used to it. Or they will wither and die.

Setting gives everyone a chance

Ofsted’s annual report, out yesterday, talked of primary schools failing to cater both for the brightest and the least able children. Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, is about to advocate greater use of setting by ability in secondary schools in her Education White Paper. Doh! Why has it taken the Government this long to spot the blindingly obvious fact that children learn at different speeds?

In mixed-ability classes, the brightest will be bored and the least able will struggle. We turned down a place at one of London’s best comprehensives when we learnt that most of the subjects were taught in mixed-ability classes. I asked the headteacher why she didn’t establish sets in more subjects, and she replied: “I’d like to, but most of the staff are against it. They say the bright girls do fine in the end, anyway, and I can’t argue with that.”

Well, I can. Why should an able child spend seven years bored out of her skull? If the educational establishment really cares about equality, schools should offer equal opportunities to learn for the very able and the least able. Mixed-ability teaching isn’t egalitarian at all; it’s grossly discriminatory.

Westward ho!

This is my last column to be filed from England until February. On Saturday, I embark with my family on a “gap term”, backpacking round southern Mexico, Central America, Venezuela and Cuba and sailing a boat in the Caribbean. We shall be arriving just as Hurricane Wilma hits the Yucatán peninsula, our first destination, and less than a fortnight after Hurricane Stan laid waste to Chiapas and western Guatemala, where we are heading next. These acts of nature confirm for us that this will be an adventure rather than a holiday. There are bound to be disasters as well as delights.

I shall be reporting on all the vicissitudes in this column, once a fortnight. ¡Adiós!

maryann.sieghart@thetimes.co.uk

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