One of the most consistent complaints heard during the Tory leadership contest has been the charge that only a few thousand 94 year-olds will choose the next Prime Minister. The Tory party is overwhelmingly male, and it is said that when its members are not playing golf in the 1950s they are busy campaigning against home rule for India in the 1930s.

But that caricature is unfair. And counterintuively, amid all the Tory-inspired political chaos, the Tory party is actually growing, it seems.