It would be bad enough for the Tory party if all that was wrong was that their economic policy is good in parts, but not working overall. That fact alone would be enough to put paid to a majority after the next election. But between now and the election in 2015 they might be able to pull an economic hat out of the bag and come good in the end. The road of political opportunity would be open. Unfortunately for the Tories in 2013, it is not a matter of what is wrong with their policy. It is a fundamental matter of what is wrong with them.
They are a party split on fundamental issues, diametrically opposed each side to the other. The collapse of the old Liberal party in the inter-war period from which it never recovered and the wilderness years of Labour from 1979 to 1997 tell us that the crisis will either be terminal or that it will last a generation. Split parties fail. Put brutally, the split is at worst terminal and at best will have to wait until a generation aspiring to the dark ideals of the past has died off.
Three issues have highlighted the sad state of affairs for a party that once believed that, like another national institution now floundering in ideological fratricide , the Church of England, they were an integral and vital part of the state which would go on and on. What they have missed, like the Cof E, is that the state as moved on without them. The modern British state sees itself as multi-cultural, tolerant and global, opposed to prejudice, inequality and judgemental posturing.
The position of the Tory right on House of Lords reform, Europe and non-discriminatory marriage demonstrates a distasteful tendency to promote all of those discarded verities upon which the majority of the population of their country have turned their backs, simply because time has moved on and both the country and the world have moved on with it.
Labour suffered the irreconcilable split with its Marxist left as socialism fell out of fashion and communism faltered; until a new young generation of politicians able to articulate a fairer society at peace with itself took over, Labour was unelectable. The Liberals, split between the Lloyd George and Asquith wings, could not get to grips with the new politics of the left . That proved terminal.
When it comes to the crunch and having weighed all the possible consequences, the majority of the people would be likely to approve an elected House of Lords, a majority both in the country and in the Commons approves non-discriminatory marriage and in spite of the fervour and conviction of the sizable minority opposed, the majority will, in the end, vote to stay with Europe. People never vote to lose their jobs.
Where does this leave the Tory Party? The answer is it leaves it free of responsibility for any of these things. 2015 is already all but lost.