I shall miss the Conservative Party. I suppose it all started to go wrong when some bright spark, fresh from the Oxford Union, decided what the Tories needed was their own Tony Blair, just as the nation had decided that it was the last thing we needed. In the last few weeks, with Cameron's comically ill-judged trip to Rwanda, the Boris fiasco and Brown's cunning reengineering of his political vices - notably dourness - as virtues, it has become clear that the Tories are just too strategically inept to survive. But what will replace Labour when Brown wins the next election, launches an Old Labour assault on all that we hold dear and then founders in fiscal chaos? That easy-listenin' combo, Ming and the Libdems, hardly seems to be the answer. And the nation is not ready for my own dream ticket - Homer Simpson as PM, Tommy Cooper (he sleeps but he shall wake) as Chancellor and The Moustache Brothers at the Foreign Office. What will probably happen is that we shall become a one party state and be perpetually subject to the internal conflicts of the Labour Party. It may not be too bad if they can pick up a few Tory stragglers with a sense of humour.
A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
it all started to go wrong for the tories in 1995.
ReplyDeleteI doubt it. People one day will become as sick of Brown as they were of Blair and the whole labour party as a whole. Higher oil prices may mean our economy will be in for a nasty ride and under those circumstances people instinctively vote for hard line leaders.
ReplyDeletePrecisely my point. Cameron may be many things but hard line is not one of them.
ReplyDeleteI've also been convinced that the Tories lost elections because Hague, IDS, and Howard, were all so comic in one way or another; each one a bald or balding politician with a funny voice or mannerism. Easy to like all of them but not to take seriously.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never been convinced about Cameron but always thought he’d beat Brown. Now, I’m not so sure. Brown’s doing well reinventing himself. His lack of charisma now looks like a lack of ego, which after Blair, can only be welcomed. Meanwhile, Cameron has lost grip on reality and has begun to act like the local squire down to check out the peasant quarters.
I'm not sure it's over just yet for the Tories.
ReplyDeleteGordon seems strangely diffident; not at all the well remembered man of steel and unflinching vision. Who knows, this period of anxiousness and uncertainty may persist, may gather momentum, may infect others; people do strange things when they become tense and unfocussed; cabinet ministers may start queuing to unburden themselves of all their sins. Things might get so bad, the cry may go up "Send for Peter"(Mandelson that is). I can see him stepping regally from Eurostar at St Pancras (so November at the earliest) to be met by a nervy Gordon, Straw, Smith, Darling and Miliband. Six months later, his 3rd resignation from cabinet, and Cameron's in! I think all this rain is getting to me.
People may one day become so sick of Labour they vote Conservative for lack of an alternative, but that does not mean they will necessarily dominate British politics again. As Cameron's current troubles indicate the party has very little internal discipline. The pressure's of office could easily see it fracture. Any new tory government could easily be a repeat of the Major years.
ReplyDeleteI doubt Cameron will last that long, Bryan. There's too many lunatics in the Conservative party who think they can revive 1950s Britain to stomach him.
ReplyDelete"People may one day become so sick of Labour they vote Conservative for lack of an alternative"
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what i think will happen.
Byran, swiming withthe flow is easy. All the luck at the moment is Brown's. This will change as events take over and the meedya gets bored.
ReplyDeleteterrorists, floods; both would make any new sitting PM look impressive, leading the country and being firm.
The tests are yet to come. For a better challenge, predict the timing of the end of the Brown Honeymoon.
The Brown honeymoon will end soon after he wins the election in Feb 08. You are right, this will end, but I thin the Tories are proving a very serious casualty of this phase.
ReplyDeleteI like the Moustache Brothers. They are the happiest looking dudes I have seen in a long while. How did Brown pull off this coup? Surely they had better offers in the queue.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, Duck, and check out their backrgound - 7 years I think it was in a Burmese jail.
ReplyDeleteYes, but will they hold up so well after a few years in the Brown cabinet?
ReplyDeleteThat picture is wonderful. My four closest schoolfriends and I each of a copy of an old beloved photograph in which we all look as gloriously, naturally happy and drunk as that. Every time we meet up we try to recreate it: older, fatter, bald-er, sadder, not much wiser but a bit, still not quite broken. It is consoling.
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