The Tory party seems to have lost the will to stay in power

James Callaghan was making an excuse for himself when he said that "there are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics". What he meant was that he had blown it.

- JOHN RENTOUL

If he had called an election in the autumn of 1978, he could have won it.

It is true that sometimes there are big changes in public opinion, but they usually happen for a reason; in 1979, for example, it was because of the strikes during the preceding winter. And there is no doubt that it becomes harder to sustain support over time. But the idea that there is some mysterious force working through the people, who simply decide one day that enough is enough, is an easy way out for a politician who has made a mistake.

What is more sea-changey is the discipline and morale of parties. Sometimes parties just give up. The most dramatic example was in 1931, when the Labour Party just didn't know what to do about the Depression because Keynesianism hadn't quite been invented. Ramsay MacDonald decided that public spending must be cut, and most Labour MPs wouldn't vote for it, so he formed a national government largely consisting of Conservatives.

But it happened to the Conservatives, too, after the devaluation of the pound in 1992. That had an effect on public opinion, but it wasn't a sea change. The reasons the Tories were crushed in a landslide five years later were largely to do with the state of the parties. The Tories were divided over Europe and the Maastricht Treaty, while there was no alternative to John Major as leader although Michael Heseltine might have held back some of the collapsing rubble in 1997. And Labour, by now endowed with a burning will to attain power, was lucky to find itself with an exceptional leader.