The Brilliance of Michael Howard.
Posted by: Meth

I consider it to be in the best interests of the Conservative party to prolong the premiership of Tory B.liar. After all, he is the most right wing Tory PM since Thatcher. But prolonging B.liar's tenure is not easy for the Tory party - they have to maintain the pretence of opposition.

IDS's brilliant work in that field was an act seemingly impossible to follow. When Labour backbenchers were sarcastically shouting "Four more years!" as IDS's superb leadership was brought to a premature halt, real Tories must have been praying he could continue. Who could possibly stand in with as much skill? Then along came Michael Howard.

I often wondered just how Howard could possibly fill IDS's shoes, but Michael's performance in the wake of the release of the Hutton report was breathtaking. It was described by a writer, Alice Miles, in The Times on January 29th. Howard got off to a cracking start, 'quibbling over legalistic technicalities rather than graciously and briefly conceding that the Prime Minister was in the clear.'

In no time, Howard hits top gear, trying a 'diversionary tactic' and 'bemoaned the fact that the report had been leaked to The Sun overnight, implied that somebody in the Government had been responsible and demanded a leak inquiry.' Steering brilliantly towards a dramatic climax, Howard then 'demanded an inquiry into the reasons for going to war with Iraq and the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction.' In light of Tory support for the war, the writer describes the hypocrisy of this as 'like Bernard Matthews professing outrage that turkeys are not given a chance to vote against Christmas.'

In case I'm boring you, I'll stop there, we now have but a small dose of the brilliance of Howard executing his cunning plan to keep Tory B.liar in power for many years.