Tim Yeo, a member of the Tory Shadow Cabinet, has admitted that the Tories need to raise their game. Let us put to one side the unfortunate fact that Michael Howard has already tried to raise his party's game by sidelining Yeo to the environment portfolio because he was so hopeless fronting health and education. Let us also put aside the even more unfortunate fact that it was Howard who made the error of combining these two important issues in one portfolio and then handing it to the useless Yeo. The malaise afflicting the Tories is far more fundamental. This was unwittingly illustrated by remarks made by Sir Malcolm Rifkind: a former Foreign Secretary and now parliamentary candidate for Kensington and Chelsea, a potential leadership candidate, we are told, if Howard falters -- and, from remarks made in yesterday's Observer, a new candidate for the Kenneth Clarke Memorial Award -- for being wrong about simply everything.

According to Rifkind, the Tories should stand on an anti-war, anti-Bush, pro-UN platform. Tony Blair's promotion of public service choice is apparently such a good idea that it will play to the Tories' advantage because the public will know that only the Tories can deliver it. On Europe, the UK Independence Party has apparently sunk Blair's strategy because it shows that only the Tories are the sensible pragmatists. And finally, the Tories should outflank Labour on civil liberties and stand up for personal freedom against the intolerance of the Home Office.

Ye gods. If the Tories believe this, they really are in deep, systemic trouble. Let's take these points in reverse order. The idea that Britons are somehow unfree is ludicrous. Virtuially all our social ills derive, on the contrary, from a libertine free-for-all: a collapse of social order and all respect for authority. And in any event, the idea that the public, at a time of mass worry over terrorism, are sitting in the Dog and Duck moaning about David Blunkett's attacks on civil liberties is so far from reality that it takes the breath away. If anything, the public is furious at Blunkett for not being heavy enough. That's why he keeps breathing fire and brimstone over everything from yobs to genodical maniacs, even though very little ever comes of it. The proper attack on Blunkett is from precisely the opposite direction.

On Europe, the UKIP is about to split the Tory vote with disastrous effects. The idea that it is doing the Tories a favour is simply extraordinary. On public services, voters view the Tories' pronouncements with at best indifference and at worst contempt. The idea that voters are going to say:' You know this Blair stuff about choice? Well you've gotta hand it to the Tories; they got there first and they're clearly going to do the business' is risible. And as for the war and America, the Tories are already turning into the John Kerry/Michael Moore glee club, an opportunism which will earn them only derision from the voters -- apart from being a fundamentally wrong-headed, spineless and morally repellent position.

The Tories' problem lies far deeper than any of them seems to realise. At this rate, they really do deserve to have no future at all.