The question was posed by Andrew Gimson in an article entitled ‘Boris the Tory’ which was published in the issue of the New Statesman that coincided with the 2014 Conservative Party Conference. The article includes the full answer to the question given by Alistair Lexden, the Conservative Party’s official historian.
"The Tories always need brilliant adventurers to provide excitement and charm in what has traditionally been a thoroughly dull party created in the image of Sir Robert Peel. Disraeli complained that none of his colleagues knew how to give a decent dinner; he enlivened the consumption of their dreadful fare with his coruscating wit and, until the sniggers became too great, with his outlandish clothes and jewelled fingers.
"He derived much inspiration from the originator of this vital strain in the Tory tradition: Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, drunken rake, womaniser, inspired writer and riveting speaker who worked tirelessly exactly 300 years ago to control events on the death of Queen Anne but lost out completely to his equally unscrupulous Whig opponents when the Hanoverians arrived.
"There are times when the Tories like to be led by their adventurers—Disraeli himself in the 19th century; Macmillan in the 20th.
"On the other hand Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Winston, having mesmerised the party for six years in the 1880s, came to regard himself as indispensable, blundered and was ruthlessly marginalised by the dullards.
"The long line of Tory adventurers has produced almost without exception clever men equipped for leadership but without any certain prospect of actually attaining it."