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October 15, 2003
That Blair lie
The old joke about the Guardian, that it was a paper where facts were free but comment was sacred. still holds true. Despite some twisted reporting on the Kelly/Hutton imbroglio, its editorials on the affair have often been rather balanced. Take today's leader, in which it counsels caution about concluding that Sir Kevin Tebbit's evidence proved Blair lied about his part in the disclosure of Kelly's name. Key quote: 'Sir Kevin, by his own admission, only arrived at the July 8 meeting as it was breaking up. He gave evidence that the first he saw of the final version of the Q&A was later that day, back inside the MoD. The conflict is tantalising, but it does not provide an open-and-shut case against Mr Blair of the kind that his enemies would like'. Quite. The Tories' opportunistic rush to leap on this bandwagon rather than behave as statesmen and wait for the final evaluation makes me think once more that -- policies apart -- they are just not government material. Posted by melanie at October 15, 2003
Comments
For Tory activists like myself, the parliamentary party's irresponsible, childish behaviour is totally exasperating. However, it is not inexplicable. Perhaps because it has always drawn a large proportion of its MPs from the public school system, many have no other conviction other than they were 'born to lead'. Lacking ideological ballast, such people have few reserves of courage and have always become jittery when their ambitions become threatened. It has always been known that the party absolutely hates opposition. After all, it must be especially galling being a humble MP when your peers are becoming fantastically rich in the City or whatever. Tory jitters and talk of leadership challenges when the party are in opposition are nothing new. People forget now that Thatcher faced much talk of this in the 1970s, and even in the early years of her tenure at Downing Street when things were not going well. The problems later Tory leaders faced speak for themselves. What has changed is that a customary lack of spine has become a psychosis in a party which had its moral shattered by the utterly disasterous Major years. It is during this period the party became - and was seen to become by the electorate - motivated only by a cynical wish to remain in power at all costs. It is especially tragic and ironic that now the party as a whole is once again intellectually in the ascendant and to an extent motivated by higher instincts, that it risks being destroyed by the selfishness of some of its members. Posted by: Andrew Cadman at October 15, 2003 01:39 PM |
