The error was not the decision to speak reasonably openly about the difficulties that lay ahead. The error was to behave as if the season of modernisation was over, a prelapsarian age with little to teach the party in darker times. In fact, the coming austerity made it more important than ever that the party be trusted, that its priorities were seen to be decent, that it was perceived to champion the needs of the whole population. Far from consigning modernisation to irrelevance, Cameron and co should have deepened their commitment to the project that had ensured his triumph in the leadership contest and defined his first years at the party’s helm.