Melanie Phillips: Reclaiming the Centre Ground (Why British Tories have come a cropper)

The Daily Mail ^ | November 8, 2004 | Melanie Phillips

[quidnunc]

Astonishingly, Michael Howard has declined to express any pleasure at the re-election of President George W Bush, and defiantly insisted instead that he would not allow the White House to tell him how to do his job.

Such coolness towards the President is all the more remarkable, since this week Tony Blair gets a privileged early audience with President Bush to discuss Iraq and the Middle East.

A Labour Prime Minister is thus being rewarded by a Republican President for his loyalty, while the Tory leader appears merely to have deepened the rift that has developed with the Bush administration over what it regards as his flakiness over Iraq.

Worse still, rather than trying to repair this estrangement Mr Howard allowed front-bencher Alan Duncan to say on the eve of the election that a win by the Democrat candidate, John Kerry, would be better for Britain and the world.

The explanation for this falling-out between supposed ideological bed-fellows reflects a continuing crisis within the Conservative party itself. For far from learning from President Bush’s success in mobilising conservative America, the Tory party is turning its back on it.

An aide to Mr Howard said at the weekend that the social conservatism of the Republicans was ‘not for us’. And a member of the shadow cabinet said ‘George Bush’s morality and neo-conservatism also does not exist over here, thank goodness’.

Such disdainful remarks display not just ignorance and prejudice towards American society and politics, but far more alarmingly a profound failure to understand British society, too.

-snip-

[quidnunc]

FYI

[Sam the Sham]

Apparently, Margaret Thatcher failed to create a populist Right in Britain. So upon her political demise the old fashioned Tory "wets" retook control of the party.

[JerseyRepub]

It is truly sad to see the party of Churchill, MacMillan and Thatcher come to this. We might be witnessing an ideological shift in Britain similar to then one we had here in the 60s and 70s. Blair seems to me to far more tory-ish than this obvious loser Howard.

It's funny, but I predicted that the Conservatives would collapse as a party the same day they successfully challenged that great lady and my second favorite political idol (Reagan being the first), Margaret Thatcher.

[WOSG]

We need to ping the Brit coservatives to "WAKE UP!!!"

This is the lamest political move since, well since Michael "my left" Foot.

Or maybe since the previous Tory leader to get bruised at the polls.

[BritishBulldog]

"I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to President George W Bush on his re-election victory. We look to the president to be a unifying force for those all over the world who share our determination to defend freedom. We look forward to working with the president."

Michael Howard.

http://www.politics.co.uk/issueoftheday/howard-bush-will-be-unifying-force-freedom-$3789390.htm

I don't know where the Mail got this story from but it's wrong.