David Cameron is starting to seem more like the heir to Kinnock than the heir to Blair

Today must be something of a crossroads for how David Cameron goes about his project for making the Conservatives electable again.

For the first year and a bit of his leadership, his plan seemed clear and seemed to be going well. His message was Change, and he put across a general picture of moving the Conservative party away from some of its more extreme positions which are at odds with the modern world. So he tried to show himself as more inclusive, more gay-friendly, and ethnic minority-friendly. He embraced the environment, and accepted the minimum wage. The best thing of all, for him, was that he did all this without really saying anything specific, that he could be held to, or that would really give us any idea of what he might do in government. And for a while, of course, this really went well - he had all the political momentum, and got the Conservatives ahead of Labour in the polls for the first time in a long time.

Then it all started going wrong. His party revolted over grammar schools and, crucially, won its battle with him on it. His ‘A list’ initiative to have a more diverse group of candidates, started more obviously to come off the rails. He has come out with a highly traditional-sounding initiative to support marriage. In recent weeks it has started to seem as though, like William Hague before him, after an initial spurt towards the centre ground, his party is now successfully dragging him back to where it feels more comfortable - that they have taught Cameron “the error of his lefty ways”, as one poster on Conservative Home has put it this morning.

And then the Ealing byelection happened. He continued to take a boldly different approach, and imposed a candidate who wasn’t even a party member. This brave gamble truly went wrong when it turned out that the non-partisan local businessman had also played with the other side. The campaign on the ground too often descended into farce, with the Grant Shapps “1234″ astro-turfing incident, complete with unbelievable denials, and the leaking of postal vote results. But it wasn’t these cock-ups, entertaining as they were, which are what really matters about the Conservative Ealing campaign. It was the fact that Cameron went in over the heads of the local party to impose an external candidate, and fought the campaign very much his way - even as “David Cameron’s Conservatives” - and then failed to pull off any improvement from the last election. Conservative MP Mark Field outlines nicely some of the things he got wrong - and surely the very personal failing of Project Cameron in Ealing gives serious succour to those in the Conservative Party who do not think he is the man for them.

If Cameron is trying to the be ‘heir to Blair’ then he only seems to have learnt half the lesson - the point is not just taking on your party to show you’re changing, but you then actually need to win the fight you’ve picked.

So where does Cameron go now?

Well, he is in a bit of a pickle. What he still needs to do, if he wants to persuade the country that the Conservative party has changed and is electable, is to make a success of Plan A. He needs to continue to take on his party and get them to change - and at least some of that needs to be not just photo-ops with huskies or whatever it is this week, but actually some substance of policy.

But as we’ve seen, those in his party who do are more attached to their Conservative views than they are to running after votes, are taking increasing control of their party back from him. Their ability to circumscribe what he does - not the photo-ops, but the actual policy substance - will surely be further strengthened by Ealing. He seems increasingly likely to be forced into a Plan B which talks about the need for change, but when it actually comes to it, is a pretty pale shade of difference.

In this way he is now coming to resemble Kinnock more than he does Blair. Between 1987 and 1992 Labour recognised the need to change - and in particular to transform their image - and they did so. But it was change-lite - Labour had still not yet deeply understood the point that convincing the public you’ve changed actually means really biting the bullet, swallowing some bitter pills, and really forswearing some things that you previously thought were important. Kinnock wasn’t the man to do that, because when you scratch his skin you find a real Labour man. It took Blair, the cuckoo in the nest, really to move them on.

If you scratch David Cameron, you do not find a centre-left moderate. He might have some friends who are not white or not heterosexual, but he is a Tory through and through. So even though at one level he must know that if he is to bring the Conservative party back to real electability, he needs to bring about real change, it is not where his heart lies.

Which is it to be? It is not yet too late for him to try to get back to Plan A. From the perspective of a few months’ hence, the current period will always look like Brown’s honeymoon - which Cameron will probably be able to write off as the one period in this Parliament that was always going to belong to Labour.

It will be interesting to see whether he is able - and wants - to continue to pursue real change. Perhaps some part of him does still want to. The difficulty of the balance was illustrated very well by some of his recent comments on marriage. He came out with proposals to reassure his traditionalists, and support marriage - but when he was inevitably asked whether his proposals would also apply to people in civil partnerships, he had a choice to make. He chose to say it would apply to gay people too. So on that issue he has faced both ways - reassuring both his traditionalists and modernisers. On many other issues he won’t be able to stay up there, Janus-like, sitting on the fence.