On the voyage of HMS Cameron the time has come for a modest course correction. Not a U-turn, not a change of destination and not by any means a slackening of pace. The pace and energy are awesome. The destination is absolutely right: power and change.

So a U-turn on any big issue would be a fatal error. The thrust of Cameron Conservatism is right, and profoundly so: right to want to change, and right to present this change as a shock. It’s just that, after a shock, Conservative supporters may need a bit of a cuddle.

Change has been overdue because, though Conservative ideas had won the argument, the mood of late 20th-century Conservatism had grown mean-spirited, edgy and defensive just as late 20th-century Britain was growing more confident, relaxed and tolerant. David Cameron has focused that message sharply and hit his party hard with it. It hurts. Consequently we have noticed.

That is good. If you have an improved product to sell then you should not conceal the original model’s defects. But nor should you alienate your very subtantial numbers of existing customers, or forget why they bought the product in the first place. A fine line must be trodden.

It has not been deftly trodden this week. Policy seemed to wobble too far one way, then overcorrect and wobble too far the other. The retreat on grammar schools probably had to be conceded in order to contain a small brush-fire among the parliamentary party, but such incidents are dangerous. If a party whose very name rejoices in the adjective “conservative” cannot find language that stitches together a respect for existing and familiar institutions with a reluctance to turn them into a doctrine and replicate them in unfamiliar situations, then it needs new speechwriters.

Toryism is anciently and uniquely placed to celebrate its wariness of the rigid application of logic to politics. As the former MP of a constituency in which good comprehensive schools have been built out of good grammar schools – an MP whose first surprise in 1979 was Margaret Thatcher’s complete lack of interest in halting that process in West Derbyshire – I take with incredulity the false history that neo-Thatcherites are trying to spin around her gloriously pragmatic decade. Beneath the coat of arms of Eighties Thatcherism the motto is not Semper Fidelis, but Ad Hoc. It is the neo-Thatcherites, not the Cameroons, who betray their party’s life-preserving tradition of bending with the wind. In truth the party’s new logo might better have been the willow than the oak.

But bend though it may, a willow still has roots: deeper than the oak. So has the Conservative Party. This brings us back to the question of Mr Cameron’s own anchorage within his party, and my opening suggestion that, though holding true to his aims, he must bend a little.

The rebirth of the Conservative Party under Mr Cameron will not be like the birth of new Labour under Tony Blair. I realise that Team Cameron has studied Mr Blair’s transformation of his party, and shrewdly understood that there is much to be learnt from this; but he should note the differences as well as the parallels.

True, both parties had grown out of touch with their times. In the imagination of the electorate, both had bad associations with the past that they needed to expunge. Both had parliamentary parties stuck in an ideological rut, and grassroots organisations not all of whose members were good advertisements for change. Both needed to buy in professional communications skills, and raise the status and authority of trained progagandists within their organisations.

So I agree with Mr Cameron that a measure – a measure – of relegation of the status of the parliamentary and the grassroots party has been necessary. Parliament is somewhat – somewhat – less important than it used to be. The electorate are somewhat – somewhat – less party-tribal than they were. Modern political leaders do need to develop direct lines of communication with the public, unmediated by MPs or local party associations. Mr Cameron is right to see this.

But he needs to stop well short of a civil war with his own people. Let us call this agglomerate of MPs and activists the lumpentoriat. It has considerable power. And it is more than just an entrenched nuisance. It has been the winners of almost all the big ideological battles of the past quarter-century. Labour has gained and kept power only by bringing its perceived policies into line with Conservative beliefs. To that extent the “core” Conservative believer is not an embarrassment to the party in the way that the “core” Labour believer was an embarrassment to Labour. Such a parallel does not work.

Mr Blair aimed to make himself popular by kicking many of his own supporters. They were a rogue minority, pulling his party away from its relationship with a wider electorate. The things they believed in were vote-losers. Clause 4 of his party’s constitution was obvious madness. From an incredibly strong position, with Tory administrations (not Tory principles) discredited and huge leads in opinion polls, Mr Blair set about this shin-kicking with calculated abandon. He could afford to.

It would be a mistake for Mr Cameron to copycat this now. There’s plenty to change in the lumpentoriat, of course. But the heart of the millions who voted Conservative in 2005 beats closer to the heart of the nation as a whole than did the heart of the Footite Labour Party whom Neil Kinnock and his successors set out to transform. 1980s Labour was – rightly – 1990s Labour’s principal enemy: a malignant tumour. But the core Conservative vote and the Tory herd at Westminster are in no sense the enemy within. Their leader should see them rather as a slow and sometimes grumpy audience who need to be warmed up a bit, and wooed. The grassroots and backbench Conservative Party is not inherently inimical to what the Tories need to be. It deserves a bit of TLC.

Easy, I know, to talk in generalities. Particulars? No change on policy, I hope – Mr Cameron’s instincts are surely right and he will stick to his guns. But how about a change of tone towards his own side? Mr Cameron does go out and about among constituency associations, and wherever he goes they like him a lot. He needs a real drive to do this more. Tory “activists” are not (like many Labour Party members) political nerds; indeed they are not for the most part activists at all; many are mercifully uninterested in Westminster politics. They are more useful than that: part of their communities – voluntary workers, supper-party givers, churchgoers, cottage-hospital fundraisers, magistrates, vilage-fête organisers. They talk to unaligned but Tory-inclined floating voters. What they are saying about Mr Cameron at present is that he seems quite nice but they aren’t sure what he stands for, and they’d like to hear him talk more about wasted taxes and the nanny state.

The parliamentary party are easy to mock, of mixed calibre and, for the moment, easy to disregard; but they murdered Thatcher, Major and almost every leader thereafter. True, there exist among them serious Neanderthals, but if the Tory whips are to target this minority, the leadership needs to inspire more affection among the middling majority. Mr Cameron may need more friends there one day.

The grammar-school storm, ridiculously unimportant as it ought to be, was not the right way to go about winning them. The impression that a small Cameroon clique is running the show may be unfair but it is an audible grumble in the Commons corridors.

The expensive recruitment of Andy Coulson as the new Tory Director of Communications has dismayed some and surprised many. It may prove inspired. It will need to show results. Mr Coulson may not be the man to advise David Cameron that, like charity, good communications begin at home. But somebody should.

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