Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Are the Tories cr***ing themselves about Clegg?

Well, I have already torn a strip off Team Clegg for their website today, so this will redress the balance.

I have a soft-spot for UK Daily Pundit. It's probably because he or she (any ideas anyone?) has the decency to read the occasional post on this blog and make the odd comment. Thank you UKDP. But he/she are also quite freewheeling. Iain Dale has him/her/them down in the Conservative Top 100, but the blog describes itself as a "centre-right blogger with no party affiliation".

Thanks to UKDP for alerting me to an article today by Tim Hames, chief leader writer of the Times.

Hames comments on the post-"Chicken Saturday" scenario thus:

It has led to the Prime Minister being so humiliated that he could be described as “a phoney” by David Cameron in the House of Commons, which is not unlike being condemned as ugly by a frog.

...The Conservative Party has convinced itself that it has recovered by returning to its traditional issues - crime, tax, Europe and immigration. ... This is the strategy with which Mr Cameron is now stuck for the next two or three years; the opposite in tone and content from what he had originally intended. Mr Cameron's future has been defined for him ...

Which is what makes the likely elevation of Nick Clegg to the leadership of the Liberal Democrats so dangerous for the Tories. He will combine a likeable personality and a moderate set of policies with the willingness to occupy the political space that Cameron Mk I aimed for but Cameron Mk II has vacated.

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