IN HIS 1908 account of a voyage across the Southern Ocean, 15,000 Miles in a Ketch, Captain Rallier du Baty describes the peculiar horror of what in French is called “an uncertain sea”. It occurs, he writes, when the wind has swung round, but the swell is trying to continue in the old direction. The signs that a sailor reads from sea and sky confuse and betray him. He can no longer anticipate. Wind, waves and swell confound each other.

The storm that has been raging around the Palace of Westminster this week seems to me to be of that kind. The wind has changed in British politics but the surface of the sea, for so long rolling relentlessly new Labour’s way, is in violent contention with the elements. Alliances between strangers are formed — and broken. Individual MPs and peers are tossed this way and that. The Prime Minister’s ability to read his own colleagues is shot to pieces.

Not a month ago we were consulting our sources, tapping our noses and opining in knowing tones that despite appearances, the two Charlies, Falconer and Clarke, had things pretty much under control in their respective halves of the Palace. This Charlie would dig in awhile, that Charlie would hedge a little, this Charlie would yield a bit, that Charlie would signal a semi-climbdown, all sides would claim victory — and the Government would get its business.

Well, the two Charlies have gone bottoms up. If Lord Falconer really does represent our unwritten constitution, I begin to see the advantages of a written one. Tony Blair, meanwhile, makes deranged speeches about repairing his marriage with the British people, no doubt in hopes of getting his leg over just one more time on May 5.

And beneath it all, a tiny seed of doubt is born, and grows. Is it possible — could it just be — is there perhaps the remotest chance — that this Government could lose the coming general election?

Such is the uncertain sea this weekend. Of course Alan Milburn’s people think it’s clever to talk up the Tories’ chances (and scare lukewarm Labour supporters into voting); but it’s thoroughly silly. Success in the polls is often a matter of momentum. The more you are talked of as a potential winner, the more substantial you seem. Mr Milburn may be feeding a phantom which materialises.

All right, all right, I know it’s unlikely. Already I hear the wise Peter Riddell muttering “balderdash . . . nonsense . . . unclimbable mountain . . . 87 swing seats . . . 9.3 per cent disadvantage . . .” and surely he is right. Be still, my beating heart.

But I’ll tell you why the heart is beating so. Not in joy but in terror. I support the Tories. And I tremble for their future, should they win this time.

A Conservative government, or Conservative-led coalition, after May 5 would be a sickly child. The party’s highest hopes today do not go beyond the slenderest of parliamentary majorities. They will not have won a decisive mandate. More importantly, they have not won the argument: not quite; and not yet. This is the wrong time for the Tories to take over.

I offer three precedents, surprisingly comparable. Each teaches that winning is not always the best option. One is a Tory victory which, in retrospect, came too soon for the party: June 1970. One is a Labour victory which, in retrospect, would better have been forgone: February and October 1974. The third is a narrow Labour defeat which, in retrospect, was a fantastically lucky escape for the party.

In 1970, a Britain under Harold Wilson had not yet properly rumbled that rootless trimmer. It was still possible to believe that he might square the unions without the bloody battle Edward Heath promised. The Tory leader squeaked in early — then tottered out prematurely; and Wilson was given a second chance in 1974. The country had to endure another five years of Labour’s third-way “mixed” economy and industrial relations mayhem until we were fully ready to despair of Labour, grit our teeth and steel ourselves for what we saw as a necessary Thatcher Government.

From her point of view, Margaret Thatcher inherited at just the right time. By then Labour had lost the argument. Nobody doubted this. Nobody could complain that the last lot had had no chance to show what they could do. The ideological Ice Age and the madnesses that engulfed the Labour Party after their 1979 defeat are all traceable to those unlucky victories in February and October 1974: victories by a party and a leadership which had no new ideas to offer the country, and no answers to its old problems.

Eighteen years later, in 1992, Labour was luckier. It lost. Britain was falling out of love with the Tories but was not quite ready for Labour. How Neil Kinnock must have cursed his fate when, on April 8, 1992, he didn’t quite make it. How new Labour must have blessed that day ever since.

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