Following this morning’s rant about Steve Hilton, The Slogger takes a more analytical view.

Most readers will by now have spotted that I’m on a one-man mission to make the media and the Tory Party stay behind after school. Both need to do extra Chilcot, PE and maths…especially the Conservatives. But there is a serious point to all this.

The shot above is of Dr Liam Fox. He is the Shadow Defence Secretary, and another of the army of scribblers about Iraq who has not yet (as such) been to the Armed Forces website to simply add up the numbers, and thus prove Brown to be a fantasist liar.

I sent Mr Fox an email this morning regarding the arithmetic re this one, which was acknowledged. But the Conservatives are still nowhere near Brown’s jugular on the issue. It’s all terribly dignified and formal….but it has no cutting edge.

This afternoon, The Times cottoned on to the Lords investigation into the nefarious expense fiddling of Peter Mandelson’s paragon of donor virtue, Lord Paul.

It is now 7.45 pm, and as yet – nearly six hours after the story broke – I haven’t seen a single Tory in front of a microphone about it.

This sort of idleness seems to be endemic in the upper ranks of the Tory Party. It is also, I suspect, the standard issue arrogance coupled with ignorance that typifies the political class these days – and has always set The Establishment apart from the rest of us who can’t afford to be like that. (Otherwise we’d be fired).

We should not forget, however, that all the above traits are born out of a type of intelligence that is too clever to do the simple thing. Patricia Hewitt was the most obvious sufferer from this I’ve ever encountered; Brown is another, and so too is Tessa Jowell.

Lord Mandelson does not suffer from this ailment. He has a nose for what people will be both prurient about and distracted by. Steve Hilton very obviously doesn’t: he is more your wood-and-trees confusion sort of fellow, in the ignoble tradition of Lord Birt.

Along with the advent of management consultancy jargon and process-driven thought has come the sort of anti-bullying political correctness that insists on dreary politeness in all things. The difference between the New Labour and Conservative hierarchies at the moment is that the former pays lip service to such drivel – while continuing to be just as nasty as ever in private; whereas the top Tories seem to have swallowed these silly ideas whole. For they are young and, on the whole, rather naive.

Add to this naivety an acceptance of the new cultural performance norm ‘Oh sod it – that’ll do’, and one can see why Cameron has barely laid a glove on the Scottish Country Dancer in Number Ten. I have sat bored and angry through dozens of PMQ sessions, and watched the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition miss the glass chin week in week out. The answer is partly Dave’s unfortunate and ill-disguised desire to do standup, but chiefly an appalling standard of briefing by the people who (one sincerely hopes) are there to help the man.

Ultimately – even in our dumbed-down culture – superficiality in any department is never going to cut it. It might in front of a Comprehensive classroom or a half-empty House of Commons. But not in an election when the other bloke really running things is (however much one may think him a sleazy, lying degenerate) without any shadow of doubt a class act when it comes to propaganda.

So unable as ever to resist a decent pun, I am making a plea tonight: if you are a senior Tory, it is mandatory that you stop being dilatory when the other side are playing accusatory. Otherwise you will wind up in the depository of history.