If nothing else, the staid climate of British politics makes for some entertaining columns; whilst politicians expound the merits of nothing in particular lest they should be branded judgemental or "out of touch", respect is due to those who do not mince their words.

Simon Heffer is aware of his detractors, but they will not stop him from slamming the welfare state or labelling Portugal a "banana republic". Now I am not convinced by all of his arguments concerning welfarism, and I happen to have had a lovely holiday in Portugal some years ago, but I appreciate the honesty nonetheless.

One thing we do agree on is that Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan on Sunday night was a cringe-fest, so this is where we begin. I ask Heffer if he thinks Brown’s attempt to appear more personable will help his election campaign. "I think Brown has quite a commendable natural reserve," Heffer begins, "in that he doesn’t parade his emotions everywhere. So I find it sad that he chose to parade them all in that television interview.

"I saw the interview David Cameron gave on Scottish Television over the weekend where he talks about the death of his child. I’ve got two children and I’m immensely sorry for anybody who loses a child, but for a public figure I think it’s something which is best kept within the family.

"I’m not interested in voting for anybody because they know how to emote, I’m interested in voting for people because they have an idea of what’s wrong with this country and more to the point they know how to put it right."

I had a feeling we’d come on to Cameron; Heffer’s columns since 2005 have displayed a palpable frustration with the leader of the Opposition. Top on his list of grievances are Cameron’s economic policies, or lack thereof. "I am particularly angry that the Conservative party has not specified that it will reverse the 50% tax rate," he begins.

"What they seem to forget is that so-called ‘rich people’ – and we’re talking about people who earn more than £150,000 a year, I know many of these people who are by no stretch of the imagination rich – use their disposable income to keep people who do not earn £150,000 a year in work. They buy things that they make, they use their services. There are going to be a lot of people earning very small amounts of money in this country who are going to suffer very hard because of 50% tax rate."

In that case what was Darling’s motivation behind this policy? "It was spite. He has been told by the Treasury that this tax rise will not make any money because people will evade it or avoid it or go abroad. So it’s purely grandstanding, it’s saying to poorer people, "we’re giving these toffs a real hiding to teach them a lesson!"

Our talk of Cameron persists, and I suggest that there might be a wider problem in British politics these days whereby no mainstream parties are willing to make an express ideological commitment. Heffer is nodding his agreement.

"We had a very low turnout at the last election of about 60%, and that wasn’t just caused by disillusionment with Blair, though there was quite a lot of that, it was also caused by disillusionment with the Tory Party. I got emails from people every day saying, "we don’t regard the Conservative party as being a Conservative Party."

"I think a lot of people who read my columns are going to vote UKIP, because UKIP believe in all sorts of things that the Tory party should believe in. They believe in cutting taxes, they believe in cutting the size of the state, they believe in getting out of Europe, they believe in grammar schools. UKIP might not win any seats but they will, as they showed last time, do a very good job of preventing the Tories from winning seats."

But is this ideological sheepishness really so new? Presumably Margaret Thatcher wasn’t nearly so brazen in 1979 as she would later become whilst in power.

"The first time I ever voted was in 1979," Heffer retorts. "I knew bloody well what Mrs Thatcher stood for. She said very clearly, ‘I’m coming in, I’m going to roll back the frontiers of the state, I’m going to tame the trade unions.’ Now that was enough, she didn’t have to say anything else."

Well then, if there is such reluctance to make an ideological commitment, is that not partly a result of the media’s insatiable demand for a sound bite? "You have to divide the media up into its constituent parts. I don’t think newspapers have done anything to contribute to this, I think we’ve behaved extremely well. We have provided an opposition in this country in the past thirteen years when the Conservative party was incapable of mounting one."

We continue into the topic of free speech more generally, and Heffer makes the case that deviance from today’s political orthodoxy is increasingly frowned upon.

"There are politicians who feel very constrained; that’s a great mistake and serves this country very badly. One reason why we’re in this mess at the moment is that the consensus view that the welfare state must be maintained not just in terms of giving money to people but also in giving jobs to people; nobody wants to challenge that... I’m not happy to pay taxes for people who work in a bureaucracy and decide where the paperclips are placed.

"I hope that people will vote for parties who are not the mainstream (and I expressly do not include the BNP in this who I regard as an abomination) – whether it’s the Green Party or UKIP or many of the independent candidates who are standing. We need people who are dissatisfied with the erosion of our democracy and want to be more democratic."

This is a surprisingly forceful call to arms from a writer whom many regard as a beacon of the establishment. But then, for Heffer, the establishment has radically altered. His columns do not represent a reactionary denunciation of innovation; rather, they encapsulate an increasingly common position – the rationalization of right-of-centre policies in response to an increasingly entrenched centre-left orthodoxy.