On the one hand, there are the ban-everything puritanical nannies; on the other, there are the poly-sexual, joint-smoking inclusivists (although it is interesting that Mr Portillo, who last year admitted his homosexual youth, has not shown any readiness to talk about his drug-ridden or, perhaps more likely, drug-free past).

But why should the Tories be forced to decide between such impoverished and simplistic views? The authoritarian approach is objectionable because it claims that the state knows better than people themselves how they should live their lives.

Once you admit the principle of authoritarianism, then you give a licence for the imposition of views that you happen to dislike: one (usually Right-wing) set of authoritarians may, for example, wish to ban black people from living in certain places or taking certain jobs. Another (usually Left-wing) set may wish to compel the same places and jobs to accept the numbers of blacks that they prescribe.

Both are wrong and both, though they usually hate one another, have a lot in common. It is probably not a coincidence that Miss Widdecombe, the most prominent Tory authoritarian, is one of the few in her party to want to ban foxhunting. Authoritarians - and virtually all the present Cabinet are authoritarians - see little distinction between disapproving of something and forbidding it. Yet that distinction is basic to modern Western civilisation.

Libertarians, though, can be equally crude. They have no sense of the history of the society of which they are a part, and an active dislike of the beliefs that such a society is likely to hold. In the case of marriage, for example, they think only of the personal choice made by each individual couple, whereas anyone with a richer sense of mankind's social nature knows that marriage affects not only the contracting parties, but also friends, relations, neighbours and thus the whole of society.

Libertarians slip from supporting choice to giving positive approval to the most radical choices made. Thus it is that most libertarians airily dismiss the dangers of drugs, or the wisdom of any sexual taboo. In last week's Spectator, Tim Hames, a spokesman for inclusiveness, wrote: A political party cannot adopt inclusion on an occasional basis. It is impossible for the Tories to associate themselves with Tony Martin and career women simultaneously.

Apart from being untrue (surely lots of career women support Tony Martin), this remark is also revealing: inclusiveness turns out to be exclusive of those who do not subscribe to its doctrines. Libertarians ought to be as angry at the authoritarian nature of the Macpherson report on the Stephen Lawrence case or the Runnymede Trust's report on Britishness as they are about the drug laws. Most of them aren't.

But there is a position that is neither libertarian nor authoritarian. It is called conservative. A conservative will be in favour of liberty, but in the context of a historical understanding of the society in which he lives. So, for instance, although he will probably think that blasphemy, in modern conditions, should be permitted, all his emotional sympathy will be against the blasphemer.

He will be in favour of economic liberty, but he will want to help those who are its victims, particularly if, like farmers or miners, they are people who have worked hard and contributed greatly to the life of his country. The conservative tempers every general doctrine with human understanding, and tends to be more defensive of an existing liberty than supportive of every new one that might be proposed.

A conservative hoped that the laws punishing drug abuse would work, but now begins to think, with regret, that they haven't. On the whole, the Conservative Party is best when it lives up to its name. At this moment, that probably means preferring William Hague to Ann Widdecombe or Michael Portillo.

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