Howard on his Way
I've just calmed down having walked back into the office five minutes ago to see "Howard to step down" beaming out of the Sky News feed.
'What?' I thought, 'do we not need that!'
Then, having read what he actually said I am most pleased:
"I've said that if people don't deliver then they go. And for me delivering meant winning the election."
Fine. And looks a bit classy against Blair's "if I'm a liability I'll step down" guff from this time last year.
"I'm 63 years old. At the time of the next election in four or five years' time I'll be 67 or 68 and I believe that's simply too old to lead a party into government.
"So as I can't fight the next election as leader of our party I believe its better for me to stand aside sooner rather than later so that the party can choose someone who can.
"I want to avoid the uncertainty of prolonged debate about the leadership of the party.
"I want the next Conservative leader to have much more time than I had to prepare our party for government.
"If we've achieved this much in just 18 months imagine what we can achieve in the next four or five years."
So this isn't him clearing his desk and buggering off as I had first imagined, it is just him being open about what everybody knew would happen anyway.
What the Tory Party needs is some stability - castles and sand and all that. If Howard stays until the Summer recess, it wouldn’t do any harm. They need to sort out which of the youngsters is in the running and have a gentlemanly leadership contest over the summer. If Cameron and Osborne can avoid standing against each other, either one has four clear years of intellectual discovery on the inside of the party and brand establishment on the outside before they take power from Gord.
'What?' I thought, 'do we not need that!'
Then, having read what he actually said I am most pleased:
"I've said that if people don't deliver then they go. And for me delivering meant winning the election."
Fine. And looks a bit classy against Blair's "if I'm a liability I'll step down" guff from this time last year.
"I'm 63 years old. At the time of the next election in four or five years' time I'll be 67 or 68 and I believe that's simply too old to lead a party into government.
"So as I can't fight the next election as leader of our party I believe its better for me to stand aside sooner rather than later so that the party can choose someone who can.
"I want to avoid the uncertainty of prolonged debate about the leadership of the party.
"I want the next Conservative leader to have much more time than I had to prepare our party for government.
"If we've achieved this much in just 18 months imagine what we can achieve in the next four or five years."
So this isn't him clearing his desk and buggering off as I had first imagined, it is just him being open about what everybody knew would happen anyway.
What the Tory Party needs is some stability - castles and sand and all that. If Howard stays until the Summer recess, it wouldn’t do any harm. They need to sort out which of the youngsters is in the running and have a gentlemanly leadership contest over the summer. If Cameron and Osborne can avoid standing against each other, either one has four clear years of intellectual discovery on the inside of the party and brand establishment on the outside before they take power from Gord.
Steady on son, you've had excellent predictions so far, let's not ruin it by fooling yourself that Labour can get away with a further term of increasing borrowing and increasing taxes to piss even more money into a 60 year old NHS model and pretending that taking £4bn a year since 1999 from the state pension fund at a time when people are expected to live on average twenty more years after retirement than they did this time a decade ago is a dream ticket for the next election.
If I were to make a prediction about the next election, it would be this - the incumbent will not be running on the economy.
Posted by
Ben |
Fri May 06, 05:09:00 pm