You could not make it up. If he had chosen to write a novel about the background to a Tory party conference, Lord Archer himself could not have got away with such a bizarre plot. Even he would have been instructed to tone down his narrative in the interests of, as it were, verisimilitude.

It is not as if the party was in great shape anyway. Even before the latest dégringolade, there was a widespread mood of quiet despair in the constituencies, and when Tories start feeling desperate they are not inclined to stay quiet. Poor Mr Duncan Smith must now feel as if he has been caught up in an endless danse macabre, with a cacophony of ghosts and skeletons drowning out everything that he is trying to say.

It is not his fault that Mr Major was indiscreet with Mrs Currie or that she chose this moment to publish, as did Alan Clark's literary executors, or that Jeffrey Archer is about to become the Boswell of Belmarsh Gaol. There was nothing that Iain Duncan Smith could do to prevent any of this, which will not prevent him from getting the blame, unless the Tory party surprises us all by rediscovering an art it seems to have lost: that of keeping calm in a crisis.

Any Tory tempted to rend yet another leader should pause long enough to ask himself three questions. Why was IDS chosen last year, what is the alternative now, and how has he spent the past 13 months?

The first is the easiest to answer. Mr Duncan Smith owed his victory to his opponents' defects. The party voted for him because he was not Kenneth Clarke or Michael Portillo, and in so doing, it made the right decision.

Ken Clarke may be an altogether larger figure, but that is the problem. He is so large that he would need two parties to accommodate him. If he had been Tory leader, he would have spent the past 13 months splitting his own party while attacking Tony Blair for not doing enough to abolish the pound. As he was not the Tory leader, he seemed to have lost interest in British politics, until his latest statement warning Mr Duncan Smith against becoming America's poodle. Mr Clarke obviously has problems with distinguishing between poodlehood and patriotism, but his real complaint is about the supposed dog's choice of owner. Though he may look like a British bulldog, Ken Clarke himself is really a Brussels poodle.

Michael Portillo is also a larger figure than IDS: so large as to be inchoate. This became apparent last summer. Mr Portillo's lieutenants may have thought that they were running a campaign for the Tory leadership, but their candidate had other ideas. He was auditioning for the role of hero in a Thomas Mann bildungsroman. He won the post, and it will be a fascinating process, no doubt taking him to Magic Mountains, but a long way from the realities of Tory politics.

So Mr Duncan Smith owed his election as much to the deficiencies of more experienced rivals as to his own qualities. He was not the best leader imaginable; merely the best available. He still is. There is no obvious alternative now, any more than there was last year. Nor has he wasted the past year.

Last week, Tony Blair talked in generalities about the weakness of universal state provision in education and health, acknowledging the need for diversity and choice. He could have made the same speech any time in the past five and a half years, and after all those years in office, he still has no idea how to make progress. IDS has, and will be revealing some of his plans this week. They are interesting, especially on education, and they have an impressive amount of detail. Mr Duncan Smith's colleagues have not been idle.

Their problem will be to persuade anyone else to pay attention. Much of the media will be far more interested in chasing John Major around America, while Edwina is no doubt planning several stunts over the next few days, and Jeffrey is bound to make the news, even from prison.

But the Tories have no choice. They will simply have to do what they were going to do anyway and hope that someone will notice. They will also have to hope for a subtle change in the national mood, something which is not impossible.

Much of the media adored last week's Labour Party conference. Caught up in the razzmatazz, many journalists were left star-struck by Mr Blair's skill in transmuting politics into show business, with the help of Bill Clinton. I wonder whether the average voter shares that reaction. Those who did not eat hamburgers and fries with Mr Clinton may have found it easier to retain their critical faculties.

Over the past few years the Tory party seemed to be growing odder and odder, less and less able to make contact with ordinary voters' concerns. While that was happening, it was Mr Blair's great strength to seem trustworthy and in touch while also being the pinnacle of glamour.

He may now be in danger of losing some of that touch. According to recent poll data, he is no longer trusted nearly as much as he was, while a substantial majority of voters have stopped believing that he will ever honour his commitments on the public services. It is time for the Tories to inject some subliminal knocking copy, of the type Labour employed so skilfully up until 1997: "He's enjoying himself all right, but what's he ever done for you?" Although Tony Blair is a superb actor, he may find that there are limits to any audience's willingness to suspend its disbelief.

Which is not to say that they will then start believing in Iain Duncan Smith. The Tories are facing the same difficulty which has dogged them since 1997: Labour's negatives do not automatically become their positives. On present evidence, those who stop trusting Tony Blair are more likely to abstain, or even vote Liberal, than they are to switch to the Tories.

There is no magic solution to this. The Tories have neither a wonderful new personality whom they can unveil, nor a dramatic policy initiative which will capture the nation's attention and drive the ghosts off the front page. So there is no alternative to hard slog. The Tories will have to concentrate on the issues which concern most voters: education, health, crime, transport and pensions. They will have to play on public anxieties, and relentlessly expose the contrast between Mr Blair's platform rhetoric and the reality of failing services. In all this, they will also have to play to IDS's strengths. There is no point in trying to turn him into a superstar, but it would not be a hopeless task to project him as decent, competent, honourable and trustworthy.

Yet there are unlikely to be any short-term successes. The Tory party is going to have to hold its nerve throughout a further period of adversity. As "Tory" was originally an Irish word, it may be appropriate that the party's present dilemma is best described in the words of an Irish parliamentarian of the 18th century. "Ireland's cup of troubles is running over," he said, "and it is not yet full."