THE prime minister’s election team has been mocked widely for running a stultifying campaign. At times it seems to consist of little more than trotting out the mantra of “strong and stable” leadership. That might not be so bad if it were effective. Judging by the polls, however, it is not.

Now it emerges that even members of the Conservative Party don’t like the campaign, nor do they sympathise with the ideological direction in which Mrs May is taking them. The Conservative website Conservative Home has conducted its own poll of just over 1,000 party members, quizzing them about both the effectiveness and content of the campaign. The results will not cheer anyone in Downing Street.

Asked to rate the effectiveness of the campaign on a scale of one to ten, with one being least effective, the biggest proportion give it just a lukewarm five out of 10. Whereas only 11% of respondents put the campaign in the top three rank, a full 32% blow it a big raspberry, putting it in the lower one-to-three range. Even among Tories, apparently, the campaign has diminished Theresa May’s standing rather than enhanced it. As Paul Goodman, a writer at Conservative Home, sees it: “the prime minister’s brand has been dented, her style of management—collegiate yet intensely centralised—has been exposed”.

There was further bad news for Team May when respondents were asked about the ideological direction of the party. The manifesto contained a not very thinly veiled rejection of Thatcherism: it repudiated “the cult of individualism” and attacked “untrammelled free markets”. In their place Mrs May offered more state intervention in the economy, and a belief “not just in society, but in the good that government can do”. This was another dig at Mrs Thatcher, who has been widely misquoted as saying “there is no such thing as society”.

Yet most of the respondents in the Conservative Home poll preferred Mrs Thatcher’s vision of society to Mrs May’s, by 42% to 37%. This reflects widespread rumblings within the party that the prime minister, in her rush to steal Labour voters, has become rather over-keen on the role of the state, in a departure from mainstream Conservatism. Many have complained that the manifesto is also anti-business, with its pledges to cap energy prices, block takeovers and put workers on boards. The Tory party was supposed to the party of business, wasn’t it?

This is only a small sample of course, but as Mr Goodman suggests, it could mean that if Mrs May does remain in Downing Street she will have to handle the liberal, free-market wing of her party with care. She might find herself having won the election—just—but the troops will not be for turning away from Thatcherism quite yet.