10.06.2005
The Conservative Party conference: a report, part III
[Posted 2:03 PM by David Pryce-Jones]
The Labour Party under Mr. Blair is unpopular, high-handed, a sweeping of the exhausted, the smug, and the despised, including some scandalous carpet-baggers and profiteers. Britain is a country in which the police shoot dead a wretched Brazilian mistaken for a terrorist, and nobody is obliged to resign. It is a country imprisoning retired pensioners, including a vicar, for not paying a manifestly unfair tax. In normal circumstances, the voters would pitch the lot out without ado.
Why is the Conservative Party apparently unable to do the necessary house-cleaning? Historically, from Pitt and Disraeli to Churchill, it has spoken for the nation. Confronted by Blair and the insolence of New Labour, the Party has run through a succession of leaders, John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, and lastly Michael Howard, who resigned after the last electoral defeat, leaving his post open. This past week, the Party has been holding its annual conference in a long process of choosing the next in line for what ought to be an easy and exciting task, but instead is apparently an assured trip to an elephants� graveyard.
David Davis came to this conference widely billed to win nomination. He said all the right things, but his manner is restrained, polite to the point of effacement, and he swallowed the ends of his sentences. He�s not a man for a set speech, said one of his campaign managers, and this certainly damaged him. The media of course jumped in. In The Times, a solidly Blairite tabloid now, two of its regular commentators, Peter Riddell and Anne Treneman, led the field as they accused Davis of dullness, something in which they have expertise as two of the most unreadable writers in Fleet Street.
Liam Fox was the last candidate for leadership to speak. Insisting on patriotic pride and taking a distance from the European nation, and laughing at political correctness, he came closest to speaking for the nation. His liveliness and evident sincerity were much appreciated. Suddenly he seemed more likely than David Davis to be able to wipe the perpetual smirk off Blair�s face.
So there it is � the 198 Conservative members of parliament are to meet in Westminster on October 18 to choose two names to go forward for the wider ballot of all Party members. All sorts of considerations are in play � age and experience versus youth and experiment, the relationship with Europe and the United States, the Iraq war and much else. The candidates all pay lip-service to the idea of modernization, and the first person able to define what this might mean by way of specifics could at last be speaking for the nation. In a final speech, the outgoing leader Michael Howard implored everyone to unite. Listening to the repeated and lugubrious exhortations of this conference to change and to unite, the words �quoth the raven, Nevermore� came to mind, and alas, couldn�t quite be driven out again.