Frederick the Great of Prussia declined the offer of a formal coronation, observing that “a crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in”. Michael Howard is about to discover the wisdom of that remark as he embarks on the task of leading the Conservative Party. He may also find that the nature of his unopposed elevation is more of a burden than a blessing.

There are disadvantages to election by acclamation. A candidate who seems so strong that he does not attract even token opposition will suffer from unrealistic expectations of him. The exercise of choosing a Shadow Cabinet, especially if you want to reduce its size radically, is more complicated when everybody can assert that they supported your bid for office. And, in a curious sense, to win without a contest robs the victor of an endorsement. Mr Howard would have more claim to a personal mandate if he had beaten David Davis with 55 per cent of the ballot than in winning a theoretical 100 per cent (but in practice 0 per cent) as has happened. It is strange to see a party which preaches the virtues of competition appear so pleased that it has not had one.

Mr Howard is, nonetheless, an able and intelligent man who could prove an asset to his party. He is right to emphasise that it will be a “long, hard slog” before the Conservatives are returned to power, an assessment vindicated by the latest Populus poll for The Times. If he is to make the progress to which he aspires then he must personally recognise the need to look again at the set of policies which he has inherited.

The Tories are suffering at the moment from what might be described as the “Blackpool fallacy”. They have convinced themselves that the policies set out at their conference last month are admirable, and the problem was an abominable leader. As Iain Duncan Smith is spending more time with his literary agent, this comforting notion runs, the party’s troubles are almost over.

This is a theory which is not only harsh on Mr Duncan Smith but massively overstates the appeal and coherence of their policies. In truth, if the leadership issue had not overshadowed all else in Blackpool then the ideas which the Tories set out that week would have been subjected to intense and unsympathetic scrutiny. Now that a regime change at Westminster has occurred, the spotlight will eventually be turned on that draft manifesto.

The most obvious deficiency with the Blackpool package is that much of it reeks of the worst kind of poll-driven opportunism. On the restoration of the earnings link for pensions, a wildly uncosted stance on transport and, most strikingly, higher education funding, the policies lack the faintest hint of consistency or rigour.

Damian Green, while serving as Shadow Education Secretary, was often charming and persuasive. His attack on Labour’s university tuition fees and proposed top-up fees must, though, rank as the most irrational and irresponsible argument from a centre-right figure anywhere in the developed world since Sir Joh BjelkePetersen, then the Premier of Queensland, suggested that the best way to deal with the proliferation of the crown of thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef might be to deploy a nuclear weapon against them.

Misplaced opportunism is not, unfortunately, the core of this matter. The more substantial failings of the Blackpool blueprint concern those areas where principle is evident. The recasting of the Conservative Party depends on the plausibility of its claim that it could improve the quality of public services. Its policies at present involve an electorally fatal contradiction.

The basic idea that the Tories want to convey is that they would improve public services “for everyone”. Yet most of the specific proposals involve subsidies of some form or another to allow the relatively affluent to escape from state provision. This is, to put it mildly, a mixed message. It would not normally inspire confidence among passengers boarding a ship if the captain were to announce that, while he was certain that he could steer the craft across the high seas, he had also ensured that a few extra lifeboats would be available to the highest bidder.

Those involved in shaping these policies do, in fairness, attempt to square the circle. Advocates of the “patient’s passport”, a scheme that would allow people to leave the NHS waiting list if they were prepared to pay 40 per cent of the cost of a private operation, use the analogy of a queue and insist that it helps everybody if that line becomes slightly shorter.

The average voter may conclude, however, that no one in his right mind would stump up hard cash to leave a line unless he was at the back, not near the front, of it. The British have a robust outlook on the etiquette of queuing. It will not take long before the Labour Party insists, with impact, that the “patient’s passport” is really about the “patient’s platinum card”. Tim Yeo, the new Shadow Health/Education Secretary, is destined to find himself swallowed alive by Gordon Brown and spat out so far that he crosses several time zones in the journey.

The programme with which Mr Howard has been bequeathed does not constitute fresh thinking. It smacks instead of reheated Thatcherism. It will reinforce, not retard, the impression that the Tories lack passion for public services, are at a loss what to do with aspects of the state which for practical or political reasons cannot be privatised and just want to liberate a small section of society from them.

Only one Conservative MP, Nick Gibb, has hit the nail on the head, writing recently that his party required a “new agenda for the state, for how it would run public services within the state more successfully”. If Mr Howard does not rethink policy dramatically, then he will indeed find that a crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in.

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