William Hague's father, Nigel, on the Conservatives' chances"Bit worried.
Strangely, the Conservatives' chances of going into government would be enhanced by coming third rather than second in the election.
The proposals to cut the number of parliamentary seats while realigning the boundaries to ensure they have roughly equal numbers of voters is widely seen as the key to the Conservatives chances of outright victory at the next election, giving them up to 20 additional seats.
Even though the quality of the defectors to Ukip is nowhere near that of the people Labour lost in the 1980s to the SDP, nevertheless there is an obvious danger that there will be sufficient disruption to ruin the Conservatives' chances.
Its editorial concentrated mainly on the Reckless defection, seeing it as a danger to the Conservatives' chances of beating Ed Miliband's Labour: "A Labour victory next year would be undeserved but Ukip, and its new friend Mr Reckless, make it more likely to happen".
Tim Montgomerie, editor of the Conservativehome website for party activists, suggested losing the boundary changes would be a "huge blow" to the Conservatives' chances in the next election.
He stressed that such a move towards accommodation with Smith might hurt the Conservatives' chances in the British general election the next month, and suggested that it might be in Smith's best interests to wait until after the election to continue negotiations.
Among the conspirators were Lord Robert Cecil, a young Conservative MP who would a quarter century later become Prime Minister as Lord Salisbury; he wrote that having Disraeli as leader in the Commons decreased the Conservatives' chance of holding office.
It is a celebration of conservative culture a chance for College Republicans and think-tank interns to drink free booze and swap ObamaCare horror stories away from the judgmental eyes of their liberal peers.
The conservatives' best chance next month is another low turnout.
