The Sketch: It takes a polecat to see a clear path through the fog and confusion

Norman Tebbit may be fully housetrained now but he's still a polecat. When asked at The Daily Telegraph's fringe meeting to comment on Tory hostility to homosexuals he let loose in his Essex drawl: "I have never known the Conservative Party to be disagreeable to homosexuals. If we were, we wouldn't have so many homosexual members of Parliament."

Laughter drowned him out but he was going on to say: "I can't believe there are just one or two, they are ..." They're everywhere! He wanted to say. Some of them looking just like us! Sucking the virtue out of the body politic! With big round, red mouths!

It's not odd that Norman should be a gay icon and but it's peculiar that he can be useful to the party. None the less, yesterday, he identified the problem of the conference with piercing clarity. "Churchill once denounced a pudding for having no theme, and this conference suffers from the same problem." He went on to suggest a theme. It was very good. It was the first thing said at the conference that all Tories could agree with. Things must be desperate for Conservatives when they can still be rallied by Polecat Power.

He observed that those who pay the piper call the tune; that the piper-payers are ministers and that our doctors and teachers have to dance to the tune that the minister calls. The theme that he proposed was this: "That money, rather than coming down from above should well up from underneath." It's how you bring market mechanisms to public services, and it underlies all the rhetoric of vouchers, choice, money following the patient and so forth. It combines freedom with protection of the feckless, the unfortunate and the frankly useless. It's how ... but you don't want to hear about that here.

The organising theme is crucial. In the current confusion, the format should have imposed an implacable sense of order on the proceedings. They should have summoned the leader of the party, whoever he is, to take the stage directly after Theresa May. He ­ if it is a he ­ would have made a leader's speech. This would have shown that there is indeed a leader, and he is in charge of things. He would have given us the great theme of the conference (see above) and then the top five members of the Shadow Cabinet would have stood up. Each would have spoken for five minutes to say how they would apply the great theme to their own area.

The scrum would be set. That's what they need. A big, powerful scrum pawing the ground ready to ruck, ready to pile into the Government and trample. But look at them, scattered, tattered and torn, wandering over a windy pitch in straggling groups. Putting in a video box and organising all-women floor speeches is not enough. We want the message. We're six years into opposition and no further ahead.

A right-wing commentator said: "It's not going too badly, is it, I think?" He's right. It's not going too badly. But that's a disaster. Anything less than overwhelming victory is a crushing defeat.

When people say things can't get any worse it's just a failure of the imagination.

simoncarr75@hotmail.com