These seem to be important times for David Cameron and his effort to persuade the British public that the Tory party really has changed and is now something that Middle England voters can safely vote for.

First he “lost” the argument with his party about grammar schools, and today there is news that much of his party, including his Parliamentary colleagues, do not accept his stance on many modern liberal moral issues.

A few battles going the wrong way doesn’t mean that he’s lost the war yet, but it does seem to be in the balance. He is consciously trying to do what Blair did to Labour in the 1990s - drag his party towards the centre ground and electability. And it wasn’t all as plain sailing for Blair as political culture now sometimes remembers.

But there is one crucial difference between Blair and Cameron. Blair really was not a socialist, and so he was able to persuade the British public that he wasn’t, and he wouldn’t be a socialist Prime Minister. But Cameron really is a Tory. He might accept gay marriage but no-one would really attempt to deny that he is a Conservative. Other than relatively around the edges, he is not going to change his party’s fundamental ideological approach, as Blair did.

If Cameron can’t persuade his colleagues, as Blair did, that the imperative of victory means having to swallow a lot of things they thought they never could - and be seen to win a battle with his own party - then it will severely damage his ability to stand before the electorate and claim that he leads a Conservative party that has changed.