After Blair: conservatism beyond Thatcher Kieron O'Hara Icon Books, 374pp, £12.99 ISBN 1840465948

This is the first in the inevitable series of books, articles and pamphlets, being prepared in different corners of the Conservative family mansion, on the subject: "Whither the Tories?" The anticipation of defeat on 5 May could yet prove gloriously wrong. However, let us accept for the sake of argument that the party needs a rethink.

O'Hara's is an erudite yet pleasingly jokey book in celebration of a strong theme running through Conservative thought and history: the theme of scepticism. He traces the idea to its beginnings in Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus, and on into the modern era with Michel de Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne, David Hume and Edmund Burke. He argues that scepticism was submerged under the tide of ideological Thatcherism - which was not really conservatism at all, but 19th-century liberalism - with the result that "there has not been a conservative party [in Britain] for 30 years".

Pyrrhonism has its attractions. It is a humble, humorous and gentle sort of creed. It declines to make grandiose statements of principle, mildly suggesting that because one can never be sure which is the correct moral or practical choice in any circumstance, one should as far as possible simply follow the customs of the country. Not providence, but prescription, gives the status quo its justification.

The problem with Pyrrho is that it is a recipe for inaction - a "don't just do something, stand there" sort of philosophy. In today's circumstances, O'Hara would "freeze the process of change in the public services", decline to rule out tax increases and prosecute only the mildest euroscepticism. He is dismissive of attempts to export liberty to the Middle East and welcomes unrestricted immigration on the grounds that keeping migrants out requires too much Canute-like effort. He spends more time attacking the "moral atavists" on the conservative wing of the Conservative Party than addressing the problems those "atavists" lament: family and social breakdown, and the great moral and social challenge of reconstituting the welfare state on principles that succour, rather than suffocate, responsibility and neighbourliness.

This book will be attractive to left- liberals of a certain age who have seen their socialism crumble into dust, and who hate the memory of Margaret Thatcher and dislike equally the Messianic certainties of Tony Blair. O'Hara provides a comfortable mooring at which exiled lefties can quietly dock with the Tories. But the mooring is an untethered buoy, some miles off the solid mainland of conservatism.

The author's stated purpose is to do for conservatism what John Rawls did for liberalism: construct a "public reason" defence of the creed on intellectual grounds alone. He describes his conservatism as "not anchored to a particular way of life, a particular view of the good, or a particular culture or society. It is an epistemological argument that, in so far as it is persuasive at all, is persuasive for intellectual reasons and not sentimental ones." He dismisses as "surely doomed" that central strand of conservatism that celebrates the numinous - the quality of the history of England, say, or the unique settlement of the Church of England that attracts emotional allegiance as well as mental agreement. In so doing, I think (to paraphrase Burke), he subverts his own authority, and leaves not one stone upon the other in the edifice of his imagination. His argument calls forth the counter to agnosticism: why should we believe you if you don't even believe yourself? Pyrrhonism is hoisted by Pyrrho.

Indeed, the religious theme (or lack of it) runs through O'Hara's argument. He is wrong to suggest that pre-Thatcher conservatism was Pyrrhonist. Quintin Hogg's celebrated Case for Conservatism (1947) begins by founding the creed on Christianity, and it was this foundation that Thatcher retained, even as she de-molished the Keynesian superstructure built by Hogg's generation. Religion aside, conservatives support the established institutions of England not merely because they are there, but because - we believe - they are right. Prescription is the mysterious product of providence.

And Pyrrhonism is no more appropriate to today than to yesterday. Intellectuals may reconcile their cleverness with their comfort by following the customs of the country out of scepticism; lesser mortals must do so out of positive commitment. Post-9/11, especially, the world will not tolerate Pyrrhonism: we are forced to take a stand and decide whether or not our culture, our civilisation, is worth defending. It is precisely the relativist self-effacement of western culture which is hollowing out our capacity for survival; similarly, it is precisely the Conservatives' perceived lack of a sense of the common good, a positive belief in the "particular culture or society" we are part of, that has explained the party's electoral misfortunes.

O'Hara approvingly quotes Peter Armstrong on "the lovely ambiguities of light and dusk". However, these are not the true alternatives: there is darkness, too, and the lovely dusk is in fact the dying of the light. This elegant and well-argued book might win over a few minds - but it leaves the heart cold.

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