The Conservatives are losing the “battle of ideas” against Labour and must harness the “zeal” of Margaret Thatcher to “save Britain from a Corbyn government”, two Tory grandees warn today.

Writing in the Telegraph, Lord Saatchi, a former party chairman, and Graham Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, say that the Conservatives are being portrayed as the “defenders of a discredited status quo”, and need to “fight back”.

The pair, both of whom are regarded as highly influential figures in the party, add that the Tories today, like Baroness Thatcher in the Seventies, must work to “not just propagate the right policies” but “secure their acceptance”.

They are spearheading an initiative by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the think tank founded by Baroness Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph in 1974, to draw ideas from the 2015 and 2017 intakes of MPs, in order to “showcase the talent, the energy and the ideas on the centre-Right”.

The project, called New Generation, is to be launched at an event tomorrow at which Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, will give a keynote speech – a move likely to be seen as part of wider efforts by the potential future Tory leader to ingratiate herself with a broad spectrum of MPs.