I AM conservative in my political views, but I hesitate to mention this in case it leads you to think I support the Conservative party.

This party does not promote traditional Toryism: like New Labour, they have “modernised” – that is to say, abandoned their historic principles in order to please the metropolitan elite, the politically-correct chattering classes of Hampstead and Islington. Not for nothing did Cameron describe himself as “the heir of Blair”. So I fully understand why this Conservative party will back the totally useless wet Theresa May for the Tory leadership.

Last week, Mrs May asked us to “judge me on my record”. Happily, there is a lot of record on which to judge her, since she is the longest-serving home secretary since 1945.

Her tenure was a singular catalogue of errors and incompetence. Recall 2014 and the chaos caused by the delay in the issue of passports. May claimed this was owing to “a surge in applications,” but it turned out she had been warned the year before that her policy of closing overseas processing offices had resulted in a backlog of 360,000 applications and weeks of delay.

She complained that the Human Rights Act permitted suspected terrorists to continue living in this country under the clause that speaks of their right “to a family life”.

She cited the case of one such suspect who was not deported “because he had a pet cat”.

Then – trademark May – after so complaining, she did nothing to get the Act amended.

As home secretary, she was in charge of the police. She cut their numbers and their budget during a long period in which the terrorist threat was at its highest. She sat back and did nothing while in Rotherham, Leicester, Bradford, Rochdale and a dozen other towns and cities the police failed to stop the wholesale rape and sexual abuse of under-age white girls by Muslim men.

She was slow and indecisive in her attempt to intervene in the infiltration of schools in Birmingham by extremists. And she allows sharia courts to operate in parallel with British law – and this in spite of the fact that such courts are complicit in the mistreatment of Muslim women by their menfolk.

The list of her sins, her half-baked and deranged actions and inactions is almost endless. As home secretary, it was her remit to put into practice Cameron’s declared aim of reducing the number of immigrants from over half a million every year to “the tens of thousands.” In fact, during her tenure immigration increased yet further. But this is the truly laughable bit – were it not so catastrophic for our country: May claimed she was powerless to reduce immigration “because of Shengen, the EU’s open borders rule.” And then she voted for Remain! How’s that for joined-up thinking?

And yet, prompted by his sinister wife, Michael Gove has entered the leadership contest for the sole purpose of keeping out the most intelligent and able candidate, Boris Johnson. The Tory wets stand by applauding such treachery. These self-serving political pygmies don’t care a jot for the future of our country. Yes, Mrs May, I will do as you ask and judge you on your record. And, in the light of it, I will fear mightily for the greater damage you will wreak when you get the keys to Number Ten.

Now you see why an old Tory like me has no time for today’s Conservative party