Worrying wake-up call for Mr Cameron

SPEAKING in the authentic, patrician tones of the Tory hierarchy, former minister Sir Nicholas Soames lays into douglas Carswell for defecting to Ukip, accusing him of ‘rank disloyalty to a party that gave him a place in Parliament’.

Leave aside that Sir Nicholas’s revered grandfather, Winston Churchill, crossed the floor of the Commons twice.

isn’t it revealing that this bombastic Cameron loyalist appears to have forgotten it was ultimately the voters of Clacton – not the Conservative Party – who entrusted Mr Carswell with a seat? as yesterday’s sensational Mail on Sunday poll spells out, those voters support him still, giving him a thumping 44 per cent lead over his old party in the forthcoming by-election. True, freak swings are common in midterm. But what makes this different is that even the longest- serving Tory activists are flocking to back Mr Carswell – while strikingly few outside the Westminster bubble have condemned him, in a party that once valued loyalty to the blue rosette above everything.

indeed, we may be witnessing a shift in the tectonic plates of politics as significant as the breakaway of Labour’s Gang of Four in the 1980s. For this poll reflects nationwide exasperation with a party elite that seems more interested in posturing over gay marriage and green taxes than passionate concerns about mass immigration, Brussels empire-building, excess taxes and regulation.

Worryingly, david Cameron has shown few signs of understanding how tribal Tories feel so comprehensively betrayed. This weekend, he received a boost when the new European Council president said an EU without Britain was unimaginable, while promising every effort to address our concerns about benefit tourism.

But with 27 partner nations to convince, it will take more than a few words of goodwill, on this frankly peripheral matter, to get Mr Cameron off the hook.

Next month, he will face his last Tory conference before the election. He has until then to prepare a dramatic strategy to accommodate Ukip and convince his rank-and-file that he’s on their side.

The alternative is a Miliband government that nobody in Britain’s centre-Right majority wants. Unlike Sir Nicholas, Mr Cameron must remember that voters have the last word – and reconnect with them, to save us from disaster.