The book to read between dozes in the Tory back stalls at Bournemouth this week is, curiously, a Labour one. Giles Radice started a diary in the dreadful aftermath of 1979 and toiled away at it zealously, in party sickness and party health, as shadow frontbencher, backbencher and peer. From disaster to triumph in 22 years, the longest of marches. And the Conservatives haven't even put their boots on yet.
Diaries 1980-2001* is full of anger and despair, the pure politics of a politician who has only one life to live and one career to make. He reels at the "catastrophe" of 1983. He asks himself the bitterest question after 1987: "Will Labour ever be in government again?" He is utterly cast down by 1992.
There's a wonderful entry for May 5 1992, when he dines at the Ivy with Peter Jenkins (long of the Guardian, then of the Independent, and one of the great political sages). Giles has bet on a Labour victory, and lost: he's paying the bill. "Peter says that Labour will never win and that the Tories will always be in power. He also says that I should leave politics and try to get a job in the European commission."
Yet, of course, only one parliament later the Blair hegemony begins, the legacy of Thatcher (if not the Ivy's fishcakes) slides down the pan of history, and the world is utterly, utterly changed. Did anyone, 15 years ago, see PM Tony buying a £3.6m pound pad in Connaught Square and pronouncing himself fit for another full term at the top? Did anyone see the ex-natural party of government winding up as also-also-also rans in Hartlepool?
One virtue of reading Radice is that it is a tale of the totally unexpected. But it is also a tale of hard work and hard slog: that long march again. Time after time, confronting its own demons, Labour did what was necessary on policy and constitution and organisation. From Neil Kinnock on, it earned its return to power. John Smith brought new credibility. Tony Blair made his own luck. Even in defeat, there was progress. But the Tories, two elections later, have made no progress and earned nothing. Nobody will be staking an Ivy bread roll on them next May.
Of course, some of the direr prognoses of doom in yesterday's heavy Sundays may be overdone. Of course, Robert Kilroy-Silk spins a tatty yarn when he asks his Ukip conference why anyone should wish to give the Conservative party the kiss of life. "What we have to do is kill it off and replace it. That is our destiny, that is our opportunity." Nevertheless, it is time to carve a few notches in the greasiest of poles.
Michael Howard, surveying episode 97 of Blair v Brown the other day, prophesied years of infighting over the leadership. Perhaps. But he needs to watch his own back. So far the Tory idea of renewal is simply to swap messiahs, from Major to Hague to Duncan Smith to Howard in four easy stumbles, rather as though you were choosing a new manager for West Bromwich Albion or a new editor for the Daily Express. What, then, becomes of him and his leadership after the next defeat?
Next May, Howard will be only a few weeks from his 64th birthday. Four or five years later - that full term Tony keeps talking about - he will be knocking at No 70's door. He will, in short, be gone, a memory, another footnote to central office history, replaced by a Rifkind, Cameron, Green, Fox or resurrected Hague. Or maybe by two or three of them in hapless succession, as the vortex of desperation deepens. After all, it's only 11 months since Howard took over. This is his first conference as leader, and already the voices at the back of the hall make it his last.
The point about reading Radice is that, from moment to moment, he and Peter Jenkins could have been right. Labour could have subsided into wretched oblivion. There was no God-given entitlement for pendulums to swing. Success had to be grafted and fought for.
But where can you find such staunchness of purpose at Bournemouth? Howard has no central policy thrusts to develop. Less taxes, more taxes or more of the same? Less spending, more spending or matched spending, pound for pound? Less Iraq involvement, more troop commitment or more of the same? Less Europe, more Europe or something unbelievable in between?
It is a dismaying stew without definition or purpose - as contradictory as oozing care and consensus from one side of the mouth and snarling about immigration from the other, as inertly hopeless as losing Damian Green from your shadow team and returning John Redwood to glory.
Howard arrives at the seaside as the only Tory leader since records began who isn't welcome to a Republican White House - but one who nevertheless preaches a kind of half-baked Bush conservatism learned from Conrad Black's Telegraph. Friendless and rootless, ideologically adrift - will he get the support of the Murdoch papers? Don't ask. They only back winners.
Nothing is for ever, to be sure; 2009 could be a totally different fishcake. Ukip could have gone the self-destruct way of all prancing extremist groups. The Liberal Democrat challenge could have collapsed (as it did for Radice in 1987). G Brown could have taken a meat cleaver to his neighbour. But unless there is a course, set and steady, then there will be no tide to ride. Unless there's a fundamental choice on Europe - properly in or properly out, not temporising like John Kerry on Iraq - then Ukip is a rocky, wrecking headland. Welcome to Bournemouth: clouds heavy, sky grey going on black. And bring a good book.
*Giles Radice's Diaries: 1980-2001, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
