Day two of the brave new Tory dawn, and the not-yet party leader has started to clarify just what he means by ‘leading from the centre’. It means, it seems, abandoning the family. Key quote from this Torygraph interview with Michael Howard: ‘Influenced partly by his wife, the ex-model Sandra Paul, he has softened his stance on social values - he no longer wants to see marriage rewarded through the tax system, for example, arguing that the Tories should recognise that many cohabiting couples live in stable relationships too’.

Oh dear. Ms Paul should go back to modelling. Cohabitation does not produce ’stable’ relationships. It produces a significantly higher rate of breakup than marriage, more infidelity, violence and abuse, and most important of all an accelerating rate of fatherless children — the single most important driving factor behind the crime rate.

Howard says he wants to be ‘inclusive’ and has pledged to help the vulnerable. When I hear the word ‘inclusive’, I reach for the sick-bag. It’s code for abandoning the vulnerable — such as the children left desolate and crippled amidst the wreckage of family disintegration. Encouraging or conniving at yet more of this social disaster is not ‘inclusive’. It’s immoral, ignoble and opportunistic.

Let’s hope this was just a rush of blood to the head in the excitement of the moment, and not an augury of a Portillistic cross-dressing strategy.