Steve Richards: It's the second toughest job in British politics, but this has been a trivial contest

Sections of the Tory party have behaved as if out of their minds on intoxicating substances

The single theme of the contest has been drugs and in particular whether Mr Cameron has inhaled, snorted or both. Most of the media and a significant section of the Conservative Party have behaved dementedly as if they are out of their minds on a peculiarly intoxicating substance.

Four candidates are seeking the second toughest job in British politics, but they may as well have been an ageing rock group about to tour once more. The questions are the ones posed to the Rolling Stones, former members of Led Zeppelin and Paul McCartney as they take to the road. Indeed, the interviewees are interchangeable. Sir Paul, did you and John Lennon take hard drugs during the sessions for Sergeant Pepper? Come on "Dave" Cameron, tell us which drugs you took?

In the light of their recent hit during the party's conference at Blackpool's Winter Gardens, perhaps the Conservative leadership contenders should go out on tour. As part of the clamour for celebrity politics, the former rock stars are well placed to contest the vacant post of Leader of the Opposition.

Mr Cameron is lucky because the whole mind-blowing issue about whether he took drugs in his youth misses the point. Given his phenomenally fast rise to prominence, the main question in the preliminary rounds of the leadership contest should have been: Has Mr Cameron the necessary experience to become a successful leader and prime minister?

He has been an MP for little more than four years and has engaged in no significant political battles. This is a very big question and one without easy answers.

It is also the question Mr Cameron assumed would be the dominant one in the campaign. Following the now famous fringe meeting at the Conservative conference in which he was asked whether he had taken drugs, I am told he was unworried about the issue. Immediately afterwards, he was more concerned about his weak answers to entirely different questions relating to his political inexperience. They were harder to answer. There is no getting away from it. He is inexperienced. Instead, the issue of drugs soared, obliterating the chance for reasoned debate on any other issue.

As a result, Mr Cameron has been tested in a way that is not as challenging as it seems. Most Conservative MPs have been wholly supportive of his evasiveness. At worst, some columnists and leader writers have chided him for not being more candid, suggesting wrongly that the media would then have moved on.

In response to this pressure, Mr Cameron has shown some steel. Yet he had no choice but to do so. Having said he was not going to give details about any youthful misdemeanours, he would have been fatally weakened if he had subsequently changed his mind. He has won credit among some Conservative MPs for doing what he had to do.

Partly because of the sudden rise of Mr Cameron, the Tories are getting more attention than at any time since their removal from power in 1997. Compare the breathlessly exciting coverage of today's first ballot with the election of Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. He did not make the front pages on the day of his triumph shortly after the attacks on the US on 11 September. He was irrelevant even on the day he acquired the crown. After the frenzy of recent weeks, the winner of this contest will be noticed. He will be in a position to make waves.

Whether he will do so is a different matter. The sudden revival of interest and the sympathetic reporting from the largely right-wing media do not amount to a recovery. The opposite is the case. The eccentricity of the contest is a symptom of the Conservatives' decline.

The dominant drugs' issue is as trivial as those that used to overwhelm Liberal Party leadership campaigns during an era when the third party was even more irrelevant than it is at the moment. I recall an absurd campaign in the 1970s when the key issue for the Liberals was whether one of the candidates had undergone a hair transplant. The alleged wearer of the transplant lost.

As I have argued before, the Conservative winner of this contest faces an incomparably easier task than Labour's leaders in the 1980s and early 1990s. He will face a Labour Prime Minister who continues defensively to fight the old battles of the 1980s, flattering the Conservatives by adopting many of their ideas and policies. This is less challenging than opposing a Prime Minister who has moved the country in a new political direction with a degree of popular support. At the same time, the powerful right- wing newspapers will give even a moderately successful Conservative leader an easy ride. Influenced by the newspapers, the broadcasters will follow suit.

But the Conservatives do not appear ready to rise to the modest task. They are not diverted by hair transplants, but dance to too many drug-related tunes. Many of their MPs are also gripped still by their obsession with Europe, the main reason why Ken Clarke has made less progress. Mr Clarke has been the only candidate to raise the party's economic policies but few in the party notice. Most have little interest in economic policy beyond a vague, ill thought-through, flirtation with the introduction of the flat tax.

The triviality of the contest shows also that the MPs are in denial about the demanding nature of the job. No one should do it for very long. The most successful leaders of the opposition have acquired the post in mid term when their party was already performing well and the next election was in sight. This was the rosy context for Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.

The least successful in electoral terms became leaders early in a parliament when their parties were struggling. Neil Kinnock, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith endured these bleaker starts and never became prime minister. It is a post without power. The leader makes speeches, gives interviews, and responds to events. He is a talking head. Soon the powerlessness becomes a problem.

If Labour wins the next election even by a tiny margin, it is possible the winner of the current contest will be in the post for eight years, like Mr Kinnock. That is too long for any figure, however great.

Mr Cameron is not so lucky, after all. He is doing too well too quickly. Perhaps his first misfortune in a soaring political career will be to win the contest and become an inexperienced leader of a party that is still a long way from power.

s.richards@independent.co.uk