A top Tory has warned of "discontent" among the party's core voters and spoke grimly of the danger of "the yawning jaws of a fourth electoral defeat".
Edward Leigh, MP for Gainsborough and chairman of the powerful all-party Public Accounts Committee, had this message for the party leader David Cameron: "Going too far to attract the floaters is a very high-risk strategy."
And he bluntly told Mr Cameron that "freezing out" the Conservative right wing and the core vote could lead people to think there was no difference between the main parties.
It was the toughest public message yet spelled out to Mr Cameron from one of the "old guard" Conservatives as the party prepares for its conference in Bournemouth next month.
Mr Leigh spoke out in an article in the conference issue of the parliamentary House Magazine.
He said that the recent Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, in which the Tory majority of 13,342 plunged to 633, was a warning to those "who in their understandable enthusiasm to reach out to the margins, think we can ride roughshod over the core".
Mr Leigh said the reasons for that result went deeper than safe-seat apathy or Liberal "negative" campaigning, insisting: "We need a serious inquiry into this breakdown."
He went on: "We know there is discontent among our core vote."
Mr Leigh stressed that the party had never been frightened of a radical makeover.
He also hit out at politically-correct education, "PC hysteria" about paedophilia and health and safety, and said the party must support traditional marriage.
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