sometimes life proves that there is indeed a silver lining to those grey clouds. just as i was trying to get over galloway i am confronted with the news that howard is about to quit as leader of the conservative party. to be fair i doubt anyone is shocked that this is happening, but i have to say it does strike me as being a tad rash and must have had gordon brown rubbing his hands with glee.
why pat why? i hear you cry.
the resignation of the conservative leader is something like a seasonal bloodsport, a defeat and lets get rid of him. sure howard is making the right noises that he is going to be too old to contest the next election, but to step down now seems to be folly.
tell us why pat – stop teasing!
well firstly howard hasn’t done too bad a job making the conservatives look delectable, he seems to have unified the party – sure it was for the simple goal of stopping tony blair, but they were unified. isn’t that enough for him to have done? with his stepping down you can see all the old splits, rivalries and fighting getting ready to boil over again. now more than ever the tories need to decide exactly what it is to be a conservative – to have a vision of a tory england that they can believe in and sell to the country – it’s not going to be easy to get that kind of vision out of them while they are in the midst of a leadership campaign. secondly there appears to be no obvious successor – so they would have been better off to have howard stay in place for a year or so, have the big discussion over what being a tory is about and in the midst of that debate you would hope a leader would come forward.
if that was not enough tony blair is perceived by many to be a big of a lame duck right now – so while they could be scoring some serious points over him and new labour they are going to spend the next few months worrying about is it going to be dr. fox or ollie letwin.
all in all it’s an own goal i am afraid.
tony breathes a sigh of relief as he can slap howard around in prime ministers question time, while gordon brown must be cheering as he contemplates leading new labour to a 4th and then to a 5th term of government. because unless the tories get down on bended knee and beg portillo to come back they are not getting close to be elected next time out and you know what that means? a new tory leader in 5 years time (if not sooner).
if it didn’t go against my class i would nominate myself as tory leader, hell i couldn’t screw them up anymore than ids or hague did.
5 comments:
I liked Hague, a man of steel and panache, a hint of devil and lots of machismo!
Plus Hague had a masculine northern accent, always a bonus, he was deffo north of the Beautiful River Trent.
Quite a lot of me wishes the next leader was Dr. Fox...Capital FM's Dr. Fox. Imagine the Sunday afternoon countdown! Great!
lets hope they pick someone who represents the core of conservative values.
neil and christine hamilton for example.
or those loveable rogues aitkin and archer (a fine double act).
or they could pick and outside such as richard littlejohn or clarkson.
but in a move echoing sir clive woodward's who is about to change sporting codes perhaps tony can skip across the chamber and see if he can make the tories a winnable option. after all it's not like his policies were that far removed.....
The mention of Portillo makes me go weak at the knees. One of those inexplicable things in life.
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