Interesting Hurd quote in Peel biography

I am reading Douglas Hurd's biography of Peel for light amusement (as a sometime-wannabe historian, reading more scholarly stuff like Ferguson's The Rothschilds depresses me more - you can imagine writing DH's book quite easily in comparison). It obviously contains many of his reflections, implicit and explicit, on politics in general. Page 99 has an interesting quote about Tory 'Ultra's':

"The Conservative Party will always include Ultras within its ranks. These are men and women who instinctively resist change and pine for a golden age that never was. Every Conservative Association has always contained such individuals, sometimes as its most energetic supporters . . . [of the 'charming' Ultras] There is nothing ungenerous in their affection for the past; their backward look is warm-hearted, even delightful. They pick out selectively what was good during the lifetime of their grandparents and great-grandparents and lament its passing. Yet most of them live pretty comfortable lives. . . . Ultras can be roused temporarily to great passion, as they were against Catholic Emancipation, for the Corn Laws, later against Home Rule for Ireland, later still in favour of Rhodesia, against European Integration. But there are limits to their passion because in the end most of them are pessimistic about politics and in particular their own chance of success".

This is an interesting and honest observation about grassroots politics as well as its Tory incarnation, not least for the clearly wrong views that this 'charming' side of the Ultra tendency tends to follow. Wistful Toryism, observing and ranking the past through spectacles dimmed by their own bias and a natural tendency to forget the grim and backward, is just one manifestation of charming grassroots conservatism; no doubt those idiots campaigning hard for the right to a dusty cramped career in an uneconomic coalmine are the same, on the other wing.

The 'sour' Ultras, are described thus: "There is nothing warm or nostalgic about their politics. many of them are intelligent and sincere; but their appeal is to the prejudices and cruelty which are part of human nature. The foreigner, the immigrant, the down-and-out, the Roman Catholic, the Jew, the Muslim - all of these have at different times been the focus of their sourness". Melanie Phillips sometimes seems to be here.

No doubt some are charming, some vicious, and many Tories are not ultras at all, but like Peel and Hurd pragmatic improvers and conservers. But the DNA of the party borrows too much from such energies for me.