All parties have dates which have a special significance for them, dates which mean little to others but merely need to be mentioned to release powerful emotions at party meetings — pride, hope, fury, shame.

Labour politicians warn against treachery by mentioning 1931, the year of Ramsay MacDonald’s apostasy, remind the movement of its ideals by talking of 1945, when Clement Attlee took power, and make themselves seem reasonable by contrasting new Labour with 1983, the date of Michael Foot’s extraordinary election disaster.

For the Liberals there is 1906, the last great Liberal landslide, and 1929, the last time they fought on a coherent programme.

Here at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth there is only one date that has a similar status, and funnily enough it isn’t 1997, a time most would rather forget. It is 1975, the year Margaret Thatcher became Tory leader and launched a searching review of party policy.

For Conservatives, 1975 was the beginning of a golden era which all want to return to, a period of electoral strength and ideological hegemony. Invoking this date is to recall the party at its best and it is therefore on every thinking Tory’s lips.

Yet listen carefully and it becomes apparent that different people are trying to do rather different things when they attempt to associate themselves and their ideas with the glorious memories of those days. And although these differences may seem rather subtle, and the topic on which they occur more than a little esoteric, in fact they point to a serious division of opinion on something that could scarcely be more electorally potent.

At fringe meetings of traditional Tory think-tanks, 1975 is talked of as the year the party began to identify the classic formula for victory at the polls and good government — economic competence, free markets, controlling public spending and, most important of all, cutting tax. Whenever Conservatives anywhere in the world have adopted these ideas with real conviction they have won, while eschewing them brings nothing but trouble.

The Conservative leadership also talks freely about 1975 as it compares this week’s new policies to the last truly successful Tory overhaul of the party programme. Yet taking her name in vain though they do, they do not mean, as the think-tanks do, that the party should return to the Thatcher formula. Instead, they say that in the same way that Mrs Thatcher thought the unthinkable and transformed the economy, the modern Conservative Party will transform public services.

And, although nobody wants to say so here in Bournemouth, this almost certainly means departing for the time being from a crucial part of Mrs Thatcher’s programme. It means fighting the next election without a serious tax cut pledge, something that could bring the leadership into direct conflict with traditionalists.

Behind the scenes at the conference, the party’s spin-doctors argue that no decision has been made about tax. They may not realise it, but in fact it has. The policies and priorities announced this week make it difficult to see how a tax cut pledge of any size could work electorally or intellectually.

The decision that the Tories should put public services first is undoubtedly the right one and the specific announcements that have been made in the past couple of days are imaginative and well thought through. Undeniably, however, the party is taking a large political risk, in particular with its bold initiative on health, allowing people to claim back some of the money for private operations if they are forced to wait too long. Tony Blair will argue that the Tories want to cut health spending, force most people to wait longer and reimburse the privileged few who can afford to go private. The entire appeal of the scheme, the idea that nobody really loses or is forced to go private against their will, depends on being able to refute the attack on spending.

Some Tory policymakers hope that an entirely new scheme for funding the NHS will allow the party to avoid this problem. It can claim that the improved efficiency of the new arrangements will free money to be handed back in tax cuts while maintaining standards. Yet even if this works intellectually, it is difficult to see it working politically.

Any scheme the Tories announce will immediately be attacked by Labour as a disguised cut in services and a betrayal of the promise to put public services first. The party will have to defend complex paper plans against this charge. It is difficult to see it doing this successfully while simultaneously arguing that money will be saved.

And here is the other point. It doesn’t work intellectually. A programme of drastic reform of public services that reduces state intervention and increases choice, essential though it is, does not save money in the short to medium term. The party’s policy unit will instead be struggling to prevent its plans from costing money.

The traditionalists always make the mistake of believing that reducing the size of the State and cutting taxes are the same thing, but they are not. In fact, they are often directly in contradiction. Vouchers in education, a funded but privately administered state pension scheme, and large administrative changes in the NHS, all reduce the role of the State and go with the grain of Tory instincts. All are on the Conservative radar. Yet all require greater public spending, at least in the short term, and therefore make tax cuts more difficult.

Conservatives are right to want lower taxes whenever possible. There have been times when tax cuts have been a sure-fire election winner and such a time will undoubtedly come again. Yet in deciding to put so much emphasis on public services, the Tories have decided that the next election is not such a time. For if public services are to come first, something must come second.

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