The Conservatives must find both new policies and a new language

Tories are seen as greedy, insensitive beings who know nothing and care less about ordinary people's problems

Recently, I was chatting to a senior civil servant. As is usual with such persons, his own political views were inscrutable. I suspect he would regard politics as being based on the pleasure principle, government on the reality principle. But he did make an interesting political observation. He said his ministerial masters worried about a lot of things; sometimes, in his view, too much. Yet among all their reasons for anxiety, one absentee was notable: the performance of the Conservative opposition. This will not come as a surprise to many Tory MPs. At present, the party is going through one of its regular phases of disgruntlement. Tories are gloomily confronting their problem, recurrent since 1997 – bad news for the Government does not mean good news for them.

No one is sure whom to blame for all this. Iain Duncan Smith is criticised only reluctantly. All sane Tory MPs agree that it would be folly for the party to become a serial killer of its own leaders. But IDS does not only win support for negative reasons. Most Tory MPs would still argue that he has made a steady, if unspectacular, start, and that after a thumping defeat, the first year of opposition is best spent laying foundations, not lunging into rash adventures. Moreover, a number of those who worked hardest to prevent Mr Duncan Smith from becoming leader have been pleasantly surprised by his performance, and especially by his ecumenism. Ideological triumphalism has not broken out; IDS is open to new thinking.

That should have been expected. He was always a bigger, more complex man than some of his more simple-minded supporters realised. They had assumed that once he had become leader, normal service could be resumed. They believed that the Tory Party had lost the confidence of the nation because of the vacillations and betrayals of the Major years, which had done such damage that poor William Hague was unable to repair it. Now, however, with the healing passage of time and with a new, confident, right-wing leader who would reconnect the party to the era of Thatcherite certainty, all would be well.

On the level of instinct as much as calculation, IDS knew that it would not be so easy. He did not only listen to new ideas because he is a naturally courteous man. He understood that this was a necessity. Indeed, he has been willing to listen to the Tory Party's most subversive contemporary figure, Francis Maude, who runs the C-Change think-tank.

Mr Maude has undergone an interesting evolution. In the late Eighties and early Nineties, he was a rising junior minister. If he had not lost his seat in the 1992 election, John Major would have promoted him to the Cabinet. In those days he seemed to be a witty, humane ultra: more Thatcherite than Margaret Thatcher herself.

Since returning to Parliament in 1997, however, he has shown a constant willingness to be unpredictable. For a time, this was masked by the breakdown of his relations with Mr Hague. Many Tories, hardened to cynicism in such matters, assumed that the spoils of victory had been disputed: who should get what job in a Hague administration.(Given the Tories' electoral standing, that would have been a somewhat premature dispute.)

But the disagreements went deeper. Mr Maude thought that Mr Hague's strategy was incoherent and took no account of the gravity of the party's problems; of its need to reinvent itself. So he allied himself to Michael Portillo, only to discover Mr Portillo was more concerned with reinventing himself. Mr Maude has now struck out on his own, preferring the freedom of a think-thank to the constraints of the front bench.

His argument is easy to summarise. In his view, the Tories' problems are a more acute form of a malaise afflicting the whole of British politics. At a time when the public is ready to believe that all politicians live on another planet, the Tories are especially vulnerable. Because of the Blairites' brilliant misrepresentations of the Major government, reinforced by the Tory Party's historic associations with privilege and riches, Tories are seen as living in another galaxy: greedy, insensitive beings who know nothing and care less about ordinary people's problems.

According to Mr Maude, all this has created a rejection mechanism in the public mind. Most voters will simply not listen to what Tories have to say. So the party hoping that attractive policies will restore its reputation is pointless. However sound the policies, an early announcement from a Tory source would merely discredit them. For at least the next two years, the party should concentrate on sounding nice. Frontbenchers should visit schools, hospitals, old-people's homes et al in the hope of associating the party with a new, gentler background music. Only after that should the Tories move on to the policy phase.

On one point, Mr Maude is persuasive. Much of the language which politicians use has become exhausted and cliché-ridden. It sounds insincere even when it is not, though it generally is. The Tories, hemmed in by negative associations and lacking a leader with Mr Blair's thespian skills, are especially vulnerable. Mr Maude is right to insist that opposition frontbenchers have opportunities denied to those caught up in the grind of government. The electoral rewards for a party which could find a new, fresh, uncorrupted political language, would be rich and Mr Duncan Smith's team have the time to invent it. They also have the leader to use it. IDS can genuinely present himself as the unpolitical politician and, given that the public is fed up with politicians, this could be an effective sales pitch.

But sympathetic language will not be enough. In politics, you are either defining yourself, or others are defining you. You are either moving forward, or being pushed backwards. The voters may be disillusioned with political parties; this does not mean they are sentimental about them. They expect their politicians to have a hard edge of competence and policy. Mr Maude wants the Tories to create a new, voter-friendly mood-music. The problem is that no one would broadcast it. Imagine a press release informing the world that Mr Snooks, front-bench spokesman for string, would be spending the day in his constituency, handing out Meals on Wheels. Mr Snooks's good intentions would immediately receive coverage, in the office wastepaper bin. If Francis Maude had his way, the Tories would not become the nice party, but the null and void party.

This is not to deny the need for a compromise with Maude-ism. If the Tory front bench could avoid out-worn, yah-boo language, they would project their message more effectively. But a message has to be sent out, concentrating on education and crime, traditionally strong Tory areas where the Government's record is assailable. Some of this attack needs to be in play before this year's party conference.

Otherwise, my civil servant acquaintance will be proved right; the Tories will have slipped off the political agenda, and not even prove capable of alarming a nervy Blair government. Mr Duncan Smith has about three months to turn things around.