Howard wanted more talk of immigration
Phillip Stephens is good today.When Michael Foot crashed to ignominious defeat in the 1983 general election, Labour's Bennite left famously complained that the party had been insufficiently radical. Nationalising the banks, pulling out of the European Union, unilateral nuclear disarmament and the rest had conceded too much to the Thatcherite ruling classes. I was reminded of this self-serving insanity when a senior Conservative mentioned to me at the weekend that Michael Howard was blaming himself for his party's latest failure. The problem, Mr Howard had confided, was that he had not returned strongly enough to the issues of asylum and immigration in the final days of the campaign.
Conservatives seem unwilling to confront the truth. So here it is: Mr Howard's campaign was as crassly ineffective as it was unpleasant. Doubters need only read the story of the electoral statistics. After eight years in power and an unpopular war in Iraq, Labour's share of the popular vote fell by more than 5 percentage points to 36 per cent. The Tories, on 33 per cent, flatlined. Mr Howard, in other words, failed to win any converts
posted by Matthew @ 5/10/2005 04:28:00 PM
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