Is it me, or is British politics missing a Conservative Party?

Now I admit, I'm highly unlikely to be ever mistaken for a Conservative. I might be fiscally cautious, conservative even. And I'm never likely to be accused of being a radical thinker. But am I the only person that wonders why this country doesn't appear to have a traditional, averse to change, cautious centre-right political party any more?

Clearly, there's a space in the British political market for what one might describe as a European-style Christian Democrat type of party. Because, equally obviously, the culture war fighting, counter-institution group that leads the current Conservative Party isn't it. 

A properly conservative political force wouldn't want to undermine the judiciary, the Civil Service, local government - it would be at ease with letting them get on with their jobs. It would campaign for home ownership, for protecting the countryside from development, for supporting farmers and small businesses.

But there isn't another political force that could, or might want to, occupy that space. No matter what you think of the Starmer administration, they aren't centre-right, and Reform are far too harsh in tone to ever persuade that type of voter. The Greens are going to outflank Labour to the left, which brings its own stresses but is an obvious choice. And the Liberal Democrats may be the most comfortable alternative left, but in order to permanently occupy that space, they would have to risk alienating a large chunk of their activists. I don't believe that it's going to happen.

So, the logic is that it should be territory that the Conservatives should hope to reclaim. The problem is that the people who make leadership decisions are minded to buy into the idea that the mistake they made in July was not to be radical enough. Not to fight culture wars with sufficient conviction. And not to admit that claiming to be tough on immigration whilst letting more people into the country than ever before was just a mite hypocritical. 

No, they've bought into the idea that fighting a populist campaign targeted at a 30% wedge of reactionary voters will gain them a victory. And, despite the evidence that building a bigger tent tends to lead to better results, key elements of the Conservative Party believe that they can cannibalise the Reform UK vote and sweep back to power in 2029.

Eventually, the Conservative Party, after its massive defeat in 1997, found its way back towards the centre of British politics or, at least, it persuaded enough people that it had, under the leadership of David Cameron. But, for the life of me, I'm not seeing a similar figure emerging from the current crop of Tory MPs, and even if they did, I couldn't see them surviving a vote of Conservative Party members. It does not augur well for our democracy...