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I like Quantum's scenario. I think giving the Liberals a chance would be healthy - it has been in the Scottish parliament. But the Tories, fun though it will be watching them wither further, will eventually find their core group of New Conservative Mandelson, Blair, Brown, whatever, and come up with a few big ideas for a time we haven't arrived at yet. The pendulum will swing but not for another decade or so, perhaps.
I can remember an editorial in The Sunday Times, pre-Murdoch and much more the broadsheet that spoke for The Establishment in those days, predicting that Labour (under Jim Callaghan) would easily win the 1979 election and had become the natural "Party of Government".
But it didn't turn out that way. Thatcher had a fresh face and charisma, much as we unreconstructed lefties might have recoiled from it ourselves, and she conjured rabbits out of hats that other politicos couldn't match: selling council houses, facing down the Unions, fighting a real live war over a colonial possession. That all appealed to a big enough demographic to keep her in power for nearly twelve years and, even when she'd gone, to cough up the Major Years, like the death rattle of a consumptive.
She took Milton Friedman and Monetarism and milked it, pragmatically, just as New Labour would then sweep in, barking about a "Third Way".
There is no way the Tories can pull this one around in the short term and squabbling over IDS, who is pathetic but neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things, is just like Labour eviscerating itself in the early 80's. Michael Howard? David Davies? Don't be daft. Placemen. Dull men. And Howard's slavic pronunciation of the letter "L" is irritating. Portillo will be back eventually, or some other young turk with a smile and the common touch and a "new idea" or two that will connect with the great unwashed, who think very differently from the majority of Barbelites. By which time, Labour will have been in power for so long, nothing will save them. It will be time for a change.
I liked Mark Lawson's recent article in the Guardian, expounding the theory of "Narrative Politics". He or she who can give us a Hollywood ending will win in modern political contests. He was suggesting, entertainingly, in G2 that Boris Johnson would be the best choice for next Tory leader, to keep the public interested in them sufficiently that they will have a chance at power when their next Messiah comes to deliver them. |
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