THE TORY party is in good heart, in the best spirits it has enjoyed since 1987. No journalist understands a political party for which he has no affection. The best writers about the Labour Party are those journalists, such as Anthony Howard, who really love that strange old creature. I know there will always be parts of the Labour Party I do not really understand, though in my younger days I became quite close to the now vanished breed of Labour intellectuals, men such as Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Hugh Gaitskell. I did not agree with what they wanted to do, but I found them sympathetic and intriguing as individuals; I liked them.

I have my instinctive empathy with the Conservative Party, and I know I write better about it than I am able to write about the other parties. This at least has the merit of being somewhat rare. There have always been more journalists whose sympathies lie with the Left.

I also have an advantage that Jimmy Margach used to enjoy. He was the lobby correspondent of The Sunday Times in the 1960s. He wrote an excellent, if forgotten, book on the ten prime ministers he had known, starting, I think, with Ramsay MacDonald. He wrote excellent character studies. Like him, I have known ten leaders of the Conservative Party, all of those who have served since Anthony Eden; before that I remember as a child listening to Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain on the wireless; I heard Winston Churchill’s heroic broadcasts during the war and in the early 1950s I heard him speak in the House of Commons.

Churchill was, of course, the greatest leader, and the second greatest was Margaret Thatcher, so admirably supported by her husband, Denis. I think the most underrated was not Alec Douglas-Home or John Major, though both had to deal with a turbulent press, to which I contributed. The most underrated was Iain Duncan Smith, who ought never to have been a party leader, for which role he lacked some essential skills. He was treated with shocking disloyalty by people who were supposed to be defending his interests. He is a man of unexpected insights, conscious of the shifting balances of modern society.

The Conservatives should have made the best of him, but they failed to do so. The great enigma remains Ted Heath, the leader who took Britain into Europe, in the belief that history would justify him. The two lost leaders the Tories never had — but ought to have chosen — were Rab Butler and Iain Macleod.

I have watched each successor and found myself comparing them with their predecessors. Michael Howard was the last leader from my own generation, though he is younger than I am. He did a useful professional job fighting the 2005 general election; his most serious mistakes were the dismissals of Howard Flight and Daniel Kruger for minor deviations from an over-stretched party line. That election was lost in any case, as was the earlier election of 2001, when William Hague was a doomed leader from the beginning; doomed, but able.

David Cameron, like William Hague, belongs to my children’s generation rather than mine. When he was first chosen I made a comparison with Harold Macmillan. That is a resemblance that other people have not recognised, but I still think it is a real one.

Both men have the quality of effectiveness. In the American phrase, “they cut the mustard”. They have a valuable political talent — a gift for friendly acquaintance. They leave the impression, on a brief meeting or on television, that they recognise the unavoidable detachment of political relationships, but combine their detachment with an easy goodwill for most of the people they meet.

Both men have the skills of political calculators, having thought through a logical strategy with its own priorities. These priorities include both their party interest and their own self-interest. In the life of power, anyone who does not make such calculations — and get them right — does not survive. Politics is a jungle in which big predators roam.

If I were a Conservative — I sit as an independent peer in the Lords — I would be well satisfied that Mr Cameron could protect his party against the predators who would like to gobble up any innocent and vulnerable Tories they might find. Macmillan walked securely through this jungle, protected by his calm and realistic appraisal of its risks and possibilities. In 1959 that skill allowed him to win one of those elections that might easily have been lost. These seem to be Mr Cameron’s methods as well, and it is beginning to look as if they may be successful.

One should not make too much of mid-term opinion polls when the next general election is still so far away; it could be delayed until 2010. Yet the latest YouGov poll is showing a 5 per cent swing to the Conservatives. They need only a 7 per cent swing to win an overall majority. Mr Cameron is already more than halfway to the winning post.

He has not given the Labour Party any target to shoot at, which is creating a growing sense of frustration on the Labour front bench. Labour’s problems have been caused by its own decisions. It would very much like to distract attention from Iraq and Afghanistan, which are increasingly unpopular wars, by angry denunciations of new Tory policies. Tony Blair tries that on every week in the House; Gordon Brown, for whom one should feel some pity, throws papers angrily at George Osborne.

Mr Cameron is, in this sense, a stealthy leader, as Tony Blair once was; he never gives the other side an issue to exploit. The Cameron Opposition is becoming increasingly enjoyable to watch. He may lack the economic principles of Margaret Thatcher, and he certainly lacks the historic standing of Churchill, but Mr Cameron knows what he’s doing. He is cutting the mustard and it is splashed across Tony Blair’s face.

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