Were I sure this was about me alone, I’d hardly bother to mention it: but I may be typical of quite a few others. If so, it’s a touch too early for the Tories to abandon hope.

Last Saturday I wrote in the Times about Sir Keir Starmer, suggesting he lacks the voice or personal command of a prime minister who will need to bully the left into division lobbies and knock warring heads together within his party. Some 900 online readers responded beneath that column. A few agreed with me but the overwhelming majority simply raged against the present government, not a few suggesting that anything would be better than this.

Another observation was made by many: that I personally was ‘reverting to type’. A few readers suggested I had been whipped into line by Rupert Murdoch or his editors. As nobody at my newspaper (including its proprietor) has ever so much as hinted at what I should write, this accusation did not trouble me. But another did. Many suggested that after six years of journalistic fun, bashing the frozen Theresa May, the unspeakable Boris Johnson and the grotesque Liz Truss, I had taken fright at the advancing prospect of a Labour government and was scuttling back beneath the Tory skirts: my tribal instincts were kicking in. Having left the party some years ago (Johnson was the last straw), I was now rooting for it: a Sunak fan boy.

Well, I do rate Sunak, but the ‘reverting to Tory type’ accusation bothered me. I thought hard about it. And basically it’s true. And if it’s true of me, an often critical observer of a political movement in which I broadly still believe, might it also prove true of millions of other former Conservative supporters who spit blood about the mess the Tories have made, but may remain subliminally fearful of a Labour government? Is there a horde of potential Tory voters out there who will find themselves shifting closer to the time?

Optimism about ‘New’ Labour ran deep in 1997. There was something sunny in the air. The economy was on the up, Britain was in recovery mode, and ‘Cool Britannia’, though a ghastly cliché, did mean something. Mr Blair and the whole New Labour dream felt like something you could look forward to. Our new young leader of the opposition suffused the prospect with a sense of centrist but progressive purpose. In his person and in his rhetoric he accentuated the positive. I, a sceptic, was in a minority.

The comrades gritted their teeth at Blair’s Tory-friendly support for free enterprise and Tory-reassuring promises to keep public spending under control, but assured him they did understand the constraints he was under, Blair replied: ‘It’s worse than that. I actually believe it.’ He did, and we sensed that.

But when Starmer reassures us that his government would not be renationalising privatised utilities nor shelling out billions more in public spending, he gives the impression that he’d love to but can’t because he’s constrained by circumstances. As a policy-garment for a would-be prime minister, a straitjacket does not reassure. Suggesting that proper socialist goals are ‘second-term’ aspirations does not attract me to the first term.

That taxes would be edged up rather than yanked up does not console, but it isn’t just the tax-and-spend that would worry me. People hear the sound rather than listen to the words. The sound of Starmer is statist, controlling, collectivist, finger-wagging and interfering, even if the words are of moderation and a middle road. Both Starmer and Blair positioned themselves as centrists, but the inner Tony palpably liked being there: his heart was in it. The inner Keir itches to throw taxpayers’ money at things but complains this cannot be afforded. In my imagination the caricature of an incoming Labour administration is of Rachel Reeves sternly tapping her calculator while Starmer turns his pockets inside out: unfortunately he’s skint.

So what would a Labour government with limited scope to tax or spend do in place of the serious stuff? There’s a relentless media demand for government to be ‘stepping in’; and the hungry sheep on the Labour left would need to be fed. Hunting, of course, would be totally outlawed very early on. Enthusiasts for private education can expect their sector to be harried. More worrying to me would be that vast but amorphous province of human behaviour whose word cloud features ‘free speech’, ‘hate speech’, ‘press controls’, ‘misogyny’, ‘homophobia’, ‘harassment’ and a score of behaviours ending in ‘-ist’. The key words are ‘clamping down’. The socialist state’s itch to poke its fingers into what we say, think, feel; what we believe, whom we see and what we like – what we are rather than (the proper province of the law) what we do – would come to the fore when ‘initiatives’ are called for but the Treasury insists they don’t involve money.

So yes, as the day of the general election grows closer and these possibilities loom, I am reverting to type. I’m a conservative who has often despaired of the Conservative party, but never of the imperative to resist the advance of the collectivist left. Brexit is just a painful memory now. Mrs May was a disappointment, Mr Johnson an embarrassment and Ms Truss a small catastrophe, but Mr Sunak is sound. My days of joining political parties are over but without apology I shall be hugging my inner Tory close.

I concede that most of the electorate have not yet moved to giving the Conservatives a second thought. Their vision is understandably occluded by rage at the shambles of the past few years, and perhaps this will guide pencils to Labour in the ballot box. Certainly those who railed at me for criticising Starmer last week will today be unable to imagine themselves voting Conservative again. But next year? It’s different when you’re actually choosing a government. If my own reversion to type is any guide, then 11th-hour returnees, though they may not win the Tories the election, may yet save the party from electoral collapse. Keep the possibility in mind.