In six or seven years’ time the Conservative manifesto for the 2010 election will have been superseded. David Cameron’s period as Prime Minister might be coming to an end or have ended. His age of austerity will be giving way to an age of ecology, an age of scientific revolution or, perhaps, the age of Boris. We don’t know. But one legacy of his early leadership will still be casting a shadow over the political stage.

If Mr Cameron becomes Prime Minister next year he will have presided over the largest-ever increase in the number of Conservative MPs. Half of the parliamentary party will be new if he achieves a Commons majority of one. Fifty to sixty of the new MPs will be women. This new generation of MPs will provide the votes for Mr Cameron’s programme. They will be the ministers of the future.

What they believe matters. Polling by ConservativeHome.com of nearly 150 adopted candidates suggests that the 2010 intake are to a large extent followers of Margaret Thatcher and her revolution that started rolling 30 years ago. Just as Mrs Thatcher had a parliamentary party that learnt its politics under Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath, Mr Cameron will inherit one that cut its ideological teeth under the Iron Lady. These candidates are overwhelmingly Eurosceptic. They are weary of green taxes. They are much more worried about terror than global warming. They support more restrictive abortion laws. They oppose a fully elected Lords.

At the same time 100 per cent support Mr Cameron’s leadership in private polls. They particularly support his marriage agenda. They embrace many of the changes of recent years, including the civil libertarianism of David Davis. They are certainly not “hangers and floggers”. Three quarters oppose capital punishment for the murder of police officers.

It is also true that the ideological views of the parliamentary party probably won’t matter that much in the early years of government. Research by Philip Cowley, of the University of Nottingham, suggests that new MPs tend to be very loyal to the leadership that helped them into the Commons. As the years go by, they become more spirited and their natural instincts surface – particularly if the opinion polls become difficult.

Mr Cameron needs to act now to ensure that the parliamentary party inherited by his successors as Tory leader will represent his socially progressive conservatism.

His A-list of candidates is largely fished from the pool of already committed Tories. Only a long-term programme of talent spotting and mentoring will build a Conservative parliamentary party with more experience of the public and voluntary sectors, that is more northern and a little less white.

Tim Montgomerie is the editor of ConservativeHome

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