For Conservative MPs gathered this weekend to bond, the time approaches when they leave behind them the argument about leadership. Their present leader will not be around much longer: I feel it, I smell it, I catch it in the wind. Before too long, those in whose hands his fate lies will summon the will to act.

The closer you get to the Tory pack, the stronger becomes the sense of animals restless for the kill. They have despaired of Iain Duncan Smith and their despair is final. This has not quite yet broken the surface of the pack’s collective consciousness, but their behaviour betrays a subliminal will.

The means by which he will be despatched, the time, and the instrument of his murder have yet to be decided: the pack may allow him to struggle a little longer. But the open contempt with which Duncan Smith is now discussed at Westminster — his scoffers no longer even bothering to lower their voices — is shocking.

His enemies have lost their fear of him, and (and this is fatal) his friends have lost their respect. A whole party has hardened its heart and only a sort of punch-drunk distractedness delays the consequence. Tory MPs are stumbling towards the inevitable.

There are plenty of candidates to replace him. Contrary to what it has become fashionable to parrot, the front and middle ranks of the 21st-century Tory party are not short of talent; and from a new Labour administration which in the coming reshuffle is considering re-hiring Jack Cunningham (Energy Under-Secretary in 1976 to the Prime Minister, James Callaghan) that accusation would be rich.

So I take as read the departure in due course of the present leader, and take as read his replacement by a stronger team leader. It will happen. Let us move the discussion past it. Once the business of the leadership has been sorted out and the Conservative Party has finished talking to itself, what should Tories be saying to the country? I have a very modest proposal to add to any list of suggestions.

My proposal does not concern the great questions about taxation, state spending and public services. These questions are eternal. Enjoyable as it is to debate them, and real as the passions are which Tory tax-cutters and Tory public-spenders expend in defending their respective corners, the controversy is less important than it sounds.

What divides the two sides is bridgeable. No Tory I know seriously thinks the Conservative Party should try to outbid its rivals in public spending pledges. No Tory I know (however much they want to reassure the electorate about health and education) would see as less than precious our party’s reputation for trying to keep a lid on spending and a cap on taxation. “Tories cost you less” is a slogan and an idea that all proper Conservatives value, and one of the assets we are confident that Third Way parties can never seize.

Equally, no serious modern Tory, however dedicated to reducing the burden of the State and the size of individual tax bills, thinks the 21st-century party could afford to sound careless about the quality of public services or ashamed of spending money on them. The tax-cuts-versus-better-services debate is a dispute over narrow ground. More than anything it is an argument about emphasis. We know that the public wants to be reassured that health, pensions and education would be safe in the hands of the Conservatives, and we know how important to both our existing supporters and many of our target voters is the Conservatives’ reputation for keeping a tight rein on spending.

How we mix and match those two messages, and how we handle the obvious tensions between them, will bring many lively arguments; but when a manifesto has to be drafted, ceasefires will be agreed and the appropriate fudges found, just as Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Chris Patten found them in drafting The Right Approach before the general election of 1979.

The coming manifesto will be able to fudge most of the European questions, too. Again, few but the most zealous of the europhiles think that the party we have, and the membership we have, could be kicked into a more enthusiastically pro-European posture than that of Labour or the Liberal Democrats. And most (not all) Conservatives are persuadable that as long as the party is markedly more cautious about the EU than its rivals then it could hold on to its Eurosceptical vote without losing the many good people who are able to marry being a Tory with wanting to make a go of our membership of the European Union. There will be some chafing here, but no need for schism.

Completing my list of pseudo- impasses that a confident newleadership could find its way through is the “inclusivist versus traditionalist” debate. It is a healthy one. Let it continue. There is no need for a final resolution. Most (not all) Tories can be persuaded that the permissive changes for which modern Parliaments have legislated since the 1960s — regrettable or otherwise — are now part of the status quo, and there is huge scope for sidestepping impasses by giving MPs free votes on “issues of conscience”.

The right thing for the Tory party to do about the permissive society is grind its teeth. Even I do not seriously argue that the Conservatives should outflank their rivals in the field of social liberalism.

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