We actually have stuff to say on this, while the Tory claim to represent change hinges on Cameron going around without a tie repeating the word “change”. Maybe in Conservative circles that makes you an unkempt young hellraiser but it does not amount to a serious commitment to reform. They are still the dastardly bunch of old school rotters they always were.

Whether or not the Lib Dem bubble bursts, the contest has concentrated minds on the injustice of our first-past-the-post voting system. On this, Labour can point to a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the alternative vote system and the party should emboldened to go further. Cameron in contrast is instinctively hostile to any step in that direction. The self-proclaimed champion of “the Great Ignored” who rails against “politicians treating people like mugs” is happy for millions of voters to be ignored in the most fundamental way.

The high watermark of Cameron’s commitment to reform is to give constituents the power to sack their MPs. Post-expenses crisis, is there a party that isn’t offering that? They are limiting themselves to reforms that can be accommodated within the existing system, even though that system was a factor shaping MPs’ appalling behaviour. Sensing that he needs to raise his game on political reform, Cameron has announced that all unelected PMs should have to seek election in six months. To introduce constitutional reform as an act of spite against one individual – a No Gordon Browns Act – far from cleaning up politics would represent a childish, party-political hijacking of the legislative process, a nadir in the quality of British law-making.

If more proof were needed that the Conservatives’ commitment to a new politics is cynical and cosmetic, I point to their resistance to a fully-elected upper chamber. Even though pretty much every mature democracy in the world has one, Cameron, the great believer in people power, thinks the British public cannot fully be trusted to elect theirs. For all the talk of change, the Conservatives will cling to every vestige of 18th century patronage politics for as long as they can. Ultimately the Tories will resist a political system that reflects the people, because they know their members and candidates are growing less representative of the people. Trying to get them to advance a reforming agenda would be like trying to run up a down escalator.

Even on a local level, the Conservatives’ supposedly progressive agenda is not all it is cracked up to be. The elements of direct democracy that they would introduce, such as referenda on council tax increases, strike me as a sly attempt to financially hobble councils into pursuing their service-slashing agenda. It’s got nothing to with genuine localism and everything to do with the party’s war against assertive left-wing councils and its desire to frustrate the provision of professionally delivered universal public services.

Finally, perhaps the most telling indicator of Conservative instincts is the way they have run their campaign. The reaction of these compassionate Conservatives to being upstaged by Clegg was, allegedly, to summon and dispatch the winged monkeys of the rightwing press. The Lib Dems can hardly respond in kind. Tory scaremongering about the consequences of stepping outside the traditional duopoly suggests that they regard the very fact of them being old and established as a reason in itself to vote for them. The abuse of every kind of inherited, unearned advantage is as central to this Conservative party’s conduct and political outlook as it is to its economic policies.

The Conservative party is a ruthless organism that specialises in survival. If it sniffs power, it may be possible to prise from its icy clasp a shred of voting reform, but if it’s a broad prospectus of real reform you want, you have to look to Labour.

Photo: ConservativeParty 2010