You’ve rightly identified the collapse of the dominant narratives but this has been not just because of their internal destruction by politicians like Margaret Thatcher but also because of external change. The problem is not just political, its also cultural.

Thatcher smashed the old culture tales of ‘fair play’ and ‘the ordinary honest working man /woman’ with ‘the enemy within’ and ‘is he one of us’ mentalities. Her replacement contribution is the deep magic of ‘There is no alternative’ which has spread far and wide through and into the culture of these islands.

There is a sense of loss of place and life being disturbed by the deep changes wrought by Thatcherism.

This is leading to what Glenn Albrecht called ’solastalgia’. The politicians feel this too.

Major was the first to try to address this with his ‘bicycling spinsters on their way to evensong’ view. Instead he showed us conclusively that the old tales had lost their power. They had hollowed out, joined the image bank and become advertising imagery.

Blair had ‘Cool Britannia’ (a very exclusive project and reminiscent of swinging london but with Oasis and the battling robots Liam and Noel standing in for the Beatles and John’n'Paul). But sadly for Tony, Oasis weren’t the Beatles.

Brown has his 1940’s image of Fife which he is busily projecting onto all of these islands and simultaneously filling the shelves of remainder bookshops with his ‘everyday heroes’.

All of these images look back and are small ‘c’ conservative.

You are right that the Tories have always been better at plugging into what the French would call ‘Deep England’. Its not surprising since they created the images from their key interest groups of crown, land and church. This is now an increasingly nostalgic picture and unrelated to the more US ‘broadacres based suburbia’ which is growing across these islands and which people like Paul Kingsnorth rail against.

Labour lost this ability to tune into the collective culture many years ago when the Fabians and their social vision delivered by professionals won out over GDH Cole’s guild socialism. It meant that Labour positioned itself as the sole champion of progressive politics. There was no alternative.

On the ground, in communities, this had negative impacts. Labour chose not to create ‘Labour places’ but instead ‘Labour vote farms’ where there was no alternative and whose sole job it was to turn out and return the policy makers to Westminster.

The communities of these islands have adapted and no longer look to the central metropolitan areas and their elites. The decline of UK national systems such as the railways, industry, the press, the Westminster parliament, cheap air travel, continental time share ownership, the channel tunnel, the MP’s expenses tale and even the postal system have all eroded the features of the identity.

In the nations of the UK, Labour’s impulse was to manage Scotland and Wales better through smothering Lab-Lib pacts and spike the guns of the SNP/Plaid, not to create a better, more democratic nation. Their reaction to the decline of the vote farms in Scotland and Wales has been to rail hysterically. Calman and the white paper is just the latest version of George Robertsons’ ‘devolution will trump nationalism’ story. There is no replacement story.

In England, all of the present Labour government (and particularly in the Treasury) do not have any attachment to regional visions in England or the alternative emerging communities who are looking beyond both the old stories and the ‘there is no alternative’ mantra. The command and control mentality has no purchase with them.

In the face of this, Labour has resorted to Fabian type and tried to control this. Labour had no regional policy and no sense of the change in communities. They tried to impose it top down aided by regional champion and unlikely midwife, John Prescott. Regional devolution failed, but not the sense of disconnect. The replacement was the favourite Thatcher vehicle – the quango and enter the RDAs.

Then, they created a very wooly beast and called it the ‘Third sector’ . They gave it a Minister (8 have held the office at the last count) and its own Office in the Cabinet Office to show that It Is Important. They developed a Compact. Both the Millibands and Liam Byrne bought up the officer class of the Third sector to try to get a handle, any form of handle, on this change. Unfortunately, the command and control impulse runs deep. The Office of the Third Sector has just broken its own compact as it realised that some of the groups they were dealing with were more radical than they could understand. Again, there is no replacement story.

It is a very quiet revolution, but with erosive rather than explosive characteristics. It is a narrative that is ongoing and being composed by many voices and places, not one. Tired of being told that policy making is not for the likes of them, they make solutions that present policy makers cannot imagine, let alone provide. In the constant face of being told ‘there is no alternative’ by Ma Thatcher and her gang of three, they are imagining alternatives.

The core of the old Conservative and Unionist Party was the landed gentry with land across the UK – socialised via a set of schools (and, critically, the Army) that turned out ‘Britons’ – people with geographical connections to all parts of the UK but with a core identity.

Both Ted Heath and Mrs Thatcher were not part of that world, and their Conservative Party is representative of ordinary (for which read English) people. Ted, with his war service was more part of it that Maggie ever could be.

Mrs Thatcher’s anti-establishment radicalism was represented internally by the war between the Dry’s and the Wet’s. The wets being the old British Landed Class. Whenever that old saw about ‘there are 3 things you should never take on in politics: the Roman Catholic church, the National Union of Mineworkers or the Brigade of Guards’ refer to that last group. Reading the biographies of the Wets, they are all ex-Guardsmen. McMillan’s government of 81, 35 of who were related to him by blood or marriage represented the last of that world.

When I worked in Belfast in the Early 90’s Henry Brooke turned up as the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. He instantly antagonised everyone by declaring himself a Corkman – the Brooke’s being major landowners in the Republic and of Protestant Ascendancy stock. The thing that really annoyed everyone was that he genuinely believed it.

The collapse of that class and its institutions for turning out Britons is what is behind the cluelessness of the modern Tory Party regarding the Union. They are entirely unable to negotiate the twists and turns of British/Scottish and all the shadings of the tumbledown constitution because they look at the UK and see England only.