A key Conservative think tank has attacked Iain Duncan Smith for wasting time in opposition.

The Centre for Policy Studies accuses Central Office of a "Vichy" approach - a reference to the French WW2 government that collaborated with the Nazis.

Former special adviser to Norman Lamont, Rupert Darwell, warns that the Tories are "paralysed - trapped between the fear that Tony Blair has colonised its ideological heartland and the fear that Conservative principles are inherently unpopular".

"The party is consumed by self-doubt to the point of apologising for its existence," he writes.