It's too soon to give up on Duncan Smith, but he needs a better team of advisers

If they go on being accused of a leadership plot, Clarke and Portillo will create one. There's no point provoking enemies you cannot crush

Remembrance Day throws up a parallel with the Tory party's recent troubles. During the First World War, medical officers were instructed to adopt a sceptical approach to self-inflicted wounds. A soldier tempted to injure himself in order to avoid combat knew that he ran the risk of a court martial and a firing squad. So the Tory party is fortunate that it is not serving in the First World War. After last week's repeated attempts at self-mutilation, it certainly deserved to be shot.

In No 10, they cannot believe their luck (nor can the Liberals). Labour is approaching a Queen's Speech against an unpromising background: a growing public mood of disappointed expectation. There will be nothing in the speech to put that right. Ministers can only offer recycled targets and initiatives, rehashed pledges and promises; a hungry dog would spurn so stale a stew. Faced with this, any half-way competent opposition would have one sole problem: to choose between the multitude of open goals. But it is hard to score goals if you have spent the past few days machine-gunning your own feet.

It is easy to apportion blame for all this. Everyone is to blame; the leader, and the led. Few if any members of the Tory parliamentary party can escape their share of guilt for recent events. Even if they were not revolting, they were not doing enough to remind their colleagues that no leader can do his duty unless his followers are prepared to follow.

It is still too early to give up on IDS's leadership. He is not a man of first-rate intellectual gifts, but neither is Tony Blair. Iain Duncan-Smith is no less able than Clement Attlee or Harry Truman were; given their opportunities, he too could run an administration. In some important respects, he has already done at least as well as anyone could have expected.

When IDS took over, he was a largely unknown figure. There were fears that his victory would secure the final and meaningless triumph of the Maastricht rebels, and that under him the party would become sectarian, rigid and ungenerous – with night after night of Bill Cash chuntering on, reliving the battles over the minutiae of the European Union treaty which destroyed the Major government.

There has been none of that. On the contrary: Mr Duncan Smith has shown himself to be generous-minded and thoughtful. He understood that his party had to devote much more intellectual energy to public services, and much less to Europe. He was also been sincere in a desire to reach out to the vulnerable and to minorities. In this, he has of course avoided the excesses of some ultra-modernising associates of Michael Portillo and Francis Maude, who seem primarily motivated by hatred of the Tory party's traditional decencies and by a wish to affront its old-fashioned members.

IDS knows that social exclusion is not confined to sink council estates. Take the man who is waiting for the train which is half an hour late for the third time that week, giving him time to worry that his kids seem to be learning nothing in school except bad language, that his mother's hip operation has been postponed yet again, and that his wife cannot stop talking about crime: three burglaries in the street during the past six months. Denied the services for which he pays heavily through taxation, that man is suffering from social exclusion, and IDS understands him and his feelings. Given half a chance, he could yet turn that understanding into a formidable electoral programme.

But he has to give himself more of a chance; above all, by strengthening his team of advisers. Since becoming leader he has shown admirable mental flexibility, and a willingness to emancipate himself from anything narrow in his intellectual background. But he has been too loyal to those old friends who told him that he could become Tory leader when few others believed it, and who sustained his campaign in the early weeks when most of his current Shadow Cabinet were still working for Michael Portillo. When he is in trouble, Ian Duncan Smith tends to fall back on these old campaigners, yet they are the last people who can get him out of trouble.

Owen Paterson, nominally his parliamentary private secretary but in reality chief of staff, is one such. An admirable fellow who personifies integrity, Mr Paterson has no political subtlety. So he is a chief of staff with a sergeant major's instincts.

To be fair to Owen Paterson, he would not claim subtlety, unlike Bernard Jenkin. Mr Jenkin was IDS's first leadership campaign manager. That lasted until the campaign became serious; there then had to be a change. Bernard Jenkin has a disastrous combination; a reasonable and fluent intelligence with a total lack of political judgement. No one on either front bench has worse judgement, but he is clever enough to dig himself and anyone who listens to him into a deep hole. Over the past week, IDS has been listening to Bernard.

When he appointed his first Shadow Cabinet, Mr Duncan Smith surprised some observers by his willingness to embrace talent and to come up with unexpected appointments such as making Oliver Letwin the shadow Home Secretary. IDS will now have to bring the same breadth and originality to his choice of kitchen cabinet. Things cannot go on as they are, and if they do, his leadership will simply implode, sooner rather than later.

IDS must also conclude a tacit non- aggression pact with Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo, partly because there is no point in continuing the conflict. Left alone, both men will rapidly absent themselves from Westminster; Mr Clarke to watch birds and sell tobacco, Mr Portillo to watch opera and make television programmes. But Ken Clarke is a biffer. If attacked, he will always biff back, as will Mr Portillo, albeit in a more thin-skinned fashion. Biffing back is not the same as plotting however. There is no conspiracy: not yet. But if they go on being accused of a leadership plot, the two men will eventually create one. There is no point in provoking enemies whom you cannot crush.

If Mr Duncan Smith can ensure that he avoids crass tactical errors, he will be in a better position to appeal for loyalty from his own backbenchers. But there should be no need for continual appeals. On one point at least, IDS was right last week: if Tory MPs do not hang together, they will hang separately. Back in the 1980s, when the Tories were still a serious party, the then Liberal leader David Steel tried to advise his troops. He told them that they should not approach every problem with an open mouth. On hearing this, Tories chuckled. It never occurred to them that a day would come when their troops would need such a message, would repeatedly be given it, and would continue to disregard it. Yet that day has now come, and disastrous consequences could ensue unless Tory MPs decide that it is time to become a grown-up party of opposition and a potential alternative government.

Nietzsche once said that if you stared into the abyss for long enough, it would stare back at you. The abyss is now looking hard at the Tory party.