Bill's Comment Page

The future for the Conservative Party - if it wants to have one

I've only just had a chance to start reading this week's Economist magazine, but as usual they have some penetrating things to say, no more so than its reaction to the parliamentary 'putsch' last week to oust the hapless Mr Iain Duncan Smith and, at the time of writing, the seemingly unstoppable impetus to replace him with one of yesterday's men, Mr Michael Howard. I've written about this last week, as the events were unfolding, so I won't go into enormous detail here.

Some of the links to Economist articles below may perhaps not be accessible to non-subscribers; I'm sorry about this. For my own part, I find this magazine essential reading and have done do for many years.

The first Leader Now for the Hard Part in the Economist says, in summary (mine), that whilst replacing Duncan Smith is a positive step, the difficulties the Conservative Party faces are not in any way solely those due to him. This brief quotation rings so true with my own experiences as an erstwhile Conservative Party activist, in the attitudes of where and with whom we should concentrate our efforts:

Remoteness and arrogance "The harsher truth is that would-be Tory MPs lack the required patience and humility, while few of those who are already MPs are prepared to stray beyond their comfort zones of genteel constituency and clubby Westminster."

There are a couple of other very interesting articles(Over to Howard and A flight to competence - Bagehot) which I think it worthwhile to read - I don't agree with everything they say, but above all they follow the Economist policy of attempting to be objective in what they report.