By Ollie Stone-Lee BBC News Online politics staff

The banner behind Iain Duncan Smith as he delivered his unity message to his critics read "leadership with a purpose" - the name given to his first raft of policies.

It was perhaps a fitting symbol of how the Conservative leader's efforts to stamp on criticism have obscured his attempts to build a new platform of ideas.

Thatcher's early policy documents have been dubbed "vague"

For months before last month's party conference, one question kept coming back at the Tories: "Why haven't you got any policies?"

With 25 policies now on the table, the focus has switched to whether Mr Duncan Smith has the personality to sell them to a sceptical public.

The party conference was effectively one long Queen's Speech for opposition, and party insiders are open in saying it does not yet amount to a full blueprint for government.

Shadow chancellor Michael Howard is clearly anxious not to issue spending commitments which could make him a hostage to fortune in what could be a very different economic climate at the next election.

So new announcements have to be carefully discussed with the party's Treasury team before going public.

Thatcher comparisons

But amid such constraints the Tory leader argues he is heading up the biggest policy rethink since Margaret Thatcher led the Opposition in the 1970s.

One senior party official from those years contrasts the atmosphere within party ranks in 1976 with what it is today.

"The mood was pretty upbeat, as the records show we were winning every election coming up," the ex-official told BBC News Online.

Oliver Letwin's plans to tackle youth crime captured attention

Certainly, Thatcher's leadership was boosted in its first-year success at the Woolwich West by-election.

The Labour government's troubles with the economy and the trade unions also gave the Tories hope.

Gallup's opinion polls showed the lead swinging between Conservative and Labour - a trend not enjoyed by Mr Duncan Smith at the equivalent point of his leadership.

A year into her leadership, however, Thatcher's "Right Approach" policy document was "modest and vague", says biographer Hugo Young.

The details of policies were only worked up in ensuing years, with more flesh on the bones of economic thinking produced a year later.

The Tories want to extend Thatcher's right-to-buy policy

Today's Tories hail the "radical" nature of their policies, but are clearly trying to mimic Thatcher's strategy.

In the foreword to his policy document, Mr Duncan Smith writes: "Following the advice of Winston Churchill, and the example of Margaret Thatcher, we will act in opposition as a lighthouse, rather than as a shop window."

The current aim is to lay out the direction, not the detail of where the party wants to go.

Close examination of the 25 policies shows 16 of them are strikingly similar to ideas included in Tory manifestos produced under William Hague.

That may not be a particular problem when many Tory MPs believe the party's public services were drowned out under Hague by campaigns on asylum and the euro.

Other policies published last month do mark genuine departures from the Hague years, such as:

• Scrapping AS levels
• Replacing the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
• Charging people who abuse the NHS, for example by missing appointments
• Giving parenting classes to the parents of disruptive children
• Giving young heroin and cocaine addicts a choice between agreeing to drug rehabilitation or facing possible court action
• Introducing new lifetime savings accounts

Extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants, a policy also announced under Hague, has provoked fears among some Tories that the party is evoking unwelcome memories of the Thatcher era while not tackling today's problems.

The party leadership instead stresses there is a new element to the plan - the promise to invest all the proceeds from Right to Buy in new social housing.

The Queen's Speech will focus on criminal justice and tackling anti-social behaviour - issues on which some Tory traditionalists fear shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin is more liberal than his Labour counterpart, David Blunkett.

Heseltine says oppositions should be wary over policies

But Letwin's talk of getting young people off the conveyer belt of crime and drug abuse won perhaps the biggest plaudits from outsiders at the party conference - even if Letwin himself says the details of all policies could yet change shape.

The good reviews for Letwin, however, prompted a firm warning from former Tory Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine about the tactics of opposition.

Stealing ideas

In the wake of the conference, Lord Heseltine told BBC News 24: "I don't myself subscribe to the view that oppositions need a set of policy, strategic, thinking documents.

"If you've got bad ideas, ill-thought out ideas, they'll be strung around your neck and they'll wear you down.

"I haven't the slightest doubt that if good policies come up, this government will pinch them."

Lord Heseltine said he would not be surprised if some of Letwin's ideas on youth crime soon appeared in one of Mr Blunkett's speeches.

The Tories at least now have something to show for the thousands of miles their spokesmen have trekked around Europe in search of good ideas.

Yet recent events mean that though the Queen's Speech is about policy for the government, it is about personality for the Tories.

The pressure is on Mr Duncan Smith to turn in a bravura performance against Tony Blair over the government's plans.

That showing is now being trailed as a key test not of whether the party has the Right Approach but of whether it has the right leader.