When Michael Foot crashed to ignominious defeat in the 1983 general election, Labour's Bennite left famously complained that the party had been insufficiently radical. Nationalising the banks, pulling out of the European Union, unilateral nuclear disarmament and the rest had conceded too much to the Thatcherite ruling classes.

I was reminded of this self-serving insanity when a senior Conservative mentioned to me at the weekend that Michael Howard was blaming himself for his party's latest failure. The problem, Mr Howard had confided, was that he had not returned strongly enough to the issues of asylum and immigration in the final days of the campaign. That's right. The Tories had lost because they had not been nasty enough. One last pitch to the visceral fears and prejudices of core supporters and, we are to believe, Mr Howard might be tucking his feet under Tony Blair's desk in 10 Downing Street.