WintonsWeek Rejoice You Tories; You Won In England Pity About The Seat Count, But Take Relief Where You Can Find It Boundary Commission Asleep At The Switch William Hague For Leader I’m glad I gritted my teeth and let the dust settle before pontificating about the election. In the immediate, bitter aftermath of the results, I was tempted to rail against the stupidity of my fellow citizens. How could they be taken in by neo-Labour’s lies, incompetence, and downright nastiness? Couldn’t they see that more Labour meant higher taxes, a crumbling economy, a continuing trashing of health, education, transport, and pensions? How could a party, who’s second in command was a nasty, ignorant, ill-educated-and-proud-of-it-oaf like Prescott, not lose all credibility with normal voters every time he opened his stupid, arrogant mouth? It took an e-mail from the Electoral Reform Society to administer a short, sharp shock, a slap around the face to bring me back to earth. “Hey. Get a hold of yourself. It’s not that bad. You won after all,” said ERS. And the numbers prove it. In England, the Tories won 8,102,662 votes and Labour 8,044,695, according to the ERS. Because of our corrupt voting system, this translated into 93 more seats for Labour than the Conservatives, and the right to govern. Independence For Scotland, Wales We truly don’t deserve decent governance if we allow fringe areas like Scotland and Wales to make the difference. This a bit like Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guyana having a veto over important French policy, which come to think of it, they did with the referendum on Maastricht in 1992. And we don’t need proportional representation to put this right, as the ERS suggests. We simply need the Boundary Commission to do its job. The Boundary Commission is supposed to make sure, without pressure from politicians, that constituency size reflects the population makeup. It has failed to do this in spades and now we have the grotesque spectacle, to coin a phrase, of the fact that it took an average of 42,000 votes to elect a Tory, and 28,000 to vote in a Labour member. We should have been aware of this on election night when a succession of northern, rotten boroughs - about 40 I think - quickly appeared on the BBC’s results screen before any Tory featured. Why Does Sunderland Do It? One Sunderland seat, returning the “former” communist Chris Mullins, again boasted of being the first to count up the votes. Why does Sunderland council waste council tax payer’s money to do this? It didn’t occur to anyone on the BBC’s panels to question why Sunderland thinks this is important, nor did they question why so many Labour seats reported so quickly. Apart from all these rotten boroughs’ mean streets being clustered together in small, poverty stricken centres of dereliction, there simply weren’t many numbers to count up. No wonder they do it so fast. This is a disgrace which must be put right. I shall be making enquires as to why the Boundary Commission has been asleep at the switch. Suggesting that Alistair Campbell’s prints might be on this one is unfair and premature. Michael Howard has been applauded for the job he did as leader, and I will go along with this to a degree. Many Conservatives like me wanted a more self-confident, radical approach to differentiate the party from Labour and the Liberal Democrats (Litcrats). Quiet About Europe Where was the call to traditional Conservative values of lower taxes, a smaller state, more freedom for individuals to make important decisions affecting their lives, health and education? Some failed Conservative candidates, like Hove’s Nicholas Boles, would have won if United Kingdom Independence Party votes had gone to the Tories. If Howard had trumpeted the party’s Euroscepticism, this seat might have gone back to the Tories, and about 26 others, according to the Sunday Telegraph’s Christopher Booker. However I also applaud the fact that Howard has decided to go. The next Tory leader hopefully won’t embrace the Koyoto treaty, as Howard did and then wondered why he was not feted in Washington, will dismiss from the front bench hand wringers like Tim Yeo and Alan Duncan who both supported statist and corrupt Democrat presidential contender John Kerry last November. Don’t forget that Howard dismissed Howard Flight, until then my MP, in a heartless, vicious, totally out of proportion reaction to a false story in the Times. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Also, next time around surely the Tories can do without an Australian like Lynton Crosby leading the election campaign. I still can’t believe I received an exhortation to vote Tory on my answering machine in a thick, barely comprehensible Australian accent. And who was the brainbox in Central Office who thought it was a good idea to have Howard running down the street delivering election leaflets as the campaign was in its closing stages? The Tories will be choosing a new leader in the next 12 months and some of the first voices we hear are failed wets like Francis Maude, Stephen Dorrell and David Willetts. Maude and Dorrell were busy saying that Tories must move to the centre to make that crucial breakthrough. They would have the Tories dilute their clear message about smaller government and taxes in a bid to be more like neo-Labour. If this worked, and it won’t, what is the point of a party of principle gaining office, if it gets there on the ideas of its enemies? Well, jobs for Maude, Dorrell and Willetts maybe, but no progress for the people of Britain. My new MP, Nick Herbert, made a superb case for traditional Tory values in his BBC Radio interview on Sunday’s Radio 4 World At One programme. But it seems that looking at the results many people were attracted to the Tories by an admittedly lukewarm campaign about taxes and illegal immigration. As Labour destroys itself before our very eyes in the coming months, the last thing the Tories should do is tone down their message. Hague For Leader, Again Among the contenders for the Tory leadership, I could live with David Davis, or even Liam Fox. According to the Sunday Telegraph, my favourite, William Hague, is not even in the top eight. But the Sunday Telegraph doesn’t know much if it puts an apologist for Toryism like Malcolm Rifkind, Andrew Lansley, and Kenneth Clarke ahead of Hague. The funniest moment of the week for me came on Sunday’s World At One, when David Blunket, dismissed from government after fornicating with someone else’s wife, called Labour colleagues who call for Tony Blair to go as “self indulgent”. This was reported on the BBC with no apparent flicker of irony. Neil Winton – May 7, 2005 |
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