Paul Staines is skeptical but interested regarding stories of a break away faction in the Tory party

Two stories in yesterday's Telegraph caught my eye and made me smile, the first hinting that disgruntled young Conservatives (young means they are all over 30, but below pensionable age) are organising to split the party.

The second, more interesting article, seemed to me to concede the frustrations of the Tories best and brightest

I suspect the stories have been splashed because not a lot is going on news wise, but there is a germ of truth in them. At dining tables and in bars all over the metropolis libertarian leaning Tories are becoming very restless. Iain Duncan Smith is not, they believe, going to pull the party forward, and us metropolitan libertarian sophisticates are more in touch with the voters than old guard Tories of whatever shade.

I've been fascinated for years with the prospect of the Tories splitting and suspect that it would happen if we had proportional representation. I've also been fascinated by the positive influence of the Progressive Democrats in Eire since the 80's and the historical influence of the German FDP. Lessons can be learnt from their disproportionate influence.

The ongoing malaise of the Tories suggests its time to re-calculate the correlation of forces in contemporary British political life. The majority of active Tories under 40 are more or less libertarian. They don't care about people's personal choices when it comes to religion, sex and drugs, they accept the logic of the free market as axiomatic.

I'm skeptical that we'll see a Tory equivalent to the Social Democratic Party (which split from the Labour Party) coming out of another electoral spanking, but if you are taking the long view, it should be encouraged, or at the very least contemplated.

Contemporary politics is boring, the mainstream spectrum is narrow. The fact that libertarian Tories are described as centre-left is a genuine breakthrough - it means that we are no longer arguing about liberal economics, but civil liberties and the liberty of the individual.

This is fertile territory to win over people who consider themselves left-of-centre. I can envisage a libertarian electoral coalition emerging over the next decade or so along those lines.

Paul Staines