Posted on 10/30/2003 2:55:19 PM PST by anotherview
Oct. 30, 2003
Jewish legislator set to be leader of English opposition
By DOUGLAS DAVIS
British legislator Michael Howard.
Photo: AP
Veteran Jewish legislator Michael Howard now looks certain to be crowned leader of the opposition Conservative Party following a bout of internecine strife that led to the political ouster of former leader Iain Duncan Smith on Wednesday night.
While nominations for the leadership remain open until next Thursday, heavy-hitters within the party were quick to announce that they would stand aside and support Howard, who is widely seen as "a big beast in the political jungle."
Colleagues see Howard as having the "right stuff," in both political and personal terms. They believe he has the authority, intelligence, maturity and gravitas that is required to restore the party's equilibrium for the first time since it plunged into a debilitating spiral of political splits and personality feuds after Margaret Thatcher was dumped in 1990.
Most important, he is viewed, both inside and outside his circle, as the most credible, plausible Tory candidate for Downing Street. Despite his 62 years, he is also seen as the man most likely to pose a serious challenge to Tony Blair. Indeed, he is the one Tory figure whom Blair is said to fear.
Born in the Welsh town of Llanelli in 1941, Michael Howard was the son of Jewish refugee parents from Romania (his shopkeeper-father changed the family name from Hecht). The rest of the family perished in the Holocaust
The young Michael was one of only two Jewish pupils at the local state school before embarking on a brilliant career at Cambridge University, where he combined law studies with a nascent passion for politics.
After establishing himself as a leading London barrister, Howard entered parliament in 1983 and was quickly spotted by Thatcher, who appointed him to a succession of junior ministerial posts before she catapulted him into the cabinet in 1987 - first as employment secretary, then as environment secretary and, under John Major, as home secretary from 1993 until the party's defeat in 1997.
It was as home secretary that Howard made his mark: In the teeth of opposition from the Labor Party, he tightened the rules on asylum (which raised embarrassing questions about his own parents), removed the right to silence of criminal suspects, toughened jail sentences and, in the spirit of the free market, introduced private prisons.
During his four years at the Home Office, he established a reputation as a "tough right-winger," but his policies were successful. As crime levels fell, he taunted his Labor opponents: "Prison works." None of his measures has been repealed and his Labor successors not only adopted his agenda but built on it.
Howard's close and prominent association with the ancien regime made him a prime hate figure after the Conservatives were swept from power. His political career appeared to be in terminal decline, an impression that was compounded when he came fifth (out of five) in the post-defeat contest for party leadership.
At the time, he emphatically declared: "I will never stand again for the leadership of the Conservative Party."
His apparent political demise, combined with his Romanian background, prompted a former junior minister in his department to declare, after the party was defeated, that there was "something of the night about him," a comment that continues to reverberate.
But Howard's rich political experience, debating skills, intellectual rigor and transparent decency persuaded Iain Duncan Smith to bring him back to front-line politics as the party's finance spokesman. His subsequent resurrection as a serious contender is regarded as little short of a modern political miracle.
But the comeback kid is not universally admired. Howard's Romanian Jewish background has also inspired coded xenophobic comment in the media since his emergence as the front-runner - currently the only runner - in the Conservative leadership stakes.
"Dracula stakes his claim," was the huge front-page headline in the pro-Labor, mass-circulation Daily Mirror on Thursday morning.
In a similar vein the previous evening, a parliamentary supporter of Howard was challenged by an aggressive BBC television interviewer: "What makes you think the country is ready for somebody with a Transylvanian heritage?"
One television commentator unflatteringly described Howard as "silky smooth, oozing confidence," but party colleagues of all complexions overwhelmingly regard him, in the words of one, as a "brainy, grown-up politician who is capable of reuniting the party."
While Howard remained steadfastly loyal to Iain Duncan Smith, he has been quietly reinventing himself for the 21st century. He has toned down his shrill rhetoric of the Nineties and is said to have moderated his views. While not abandoning his passionate commitment to America, he moved from being Europhobic to a milder Euroskeptic position.
But Howard has not abandoned his Jewish roots. Jewish officials do not recall him pronouncing on issues affecting Israel but they regard him as "a friend."
He attends a Liberal Jewish synagogue in London's smart St Johns Wood and is a regular at Jewish events. According to one senior official: "He is a committed member of the Jewish community," although one observer noted: that "he is immensely private and unlikely to parade his personal life in front of the public."
Outside politics, he is at ease in the boardrooms of a large medical-equipment firm and a communications company. He is also to be found regularly at sporting events (he supports Liverpool and the New York Mets).
His marriage to the to the statuesque, blonde Sixties model Sandra Paul (his first, her fourth), has produced two children and is said to be one of the strongest and most enduring unions within the overheated British political fishbowl.
I don't think so. Show me the relevant law.
Amazing. Really amazing.
Nonsense. You must be getting confused, I think, with the monarchy.
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