Libertarian in Race for Tory Leadership
Alan Duncan confirmed that he is planning to stand as a candidate to be Michael Howard's successor as Conservative party leader on this morning's Today programme.
Duncan: Punches above weight
The diminutive Duncan, MP for the idyllic, and very safe, seat of Rutland and Melton in Leicestershire, is one of the few true libertarians in the Conservative party. Considered Thatcherite until his social ideals were fully understood, Duncan is both economically and socially liberal.
Duncan also has a degree of baggage that would give good sport to the press: he made is fortune as an oil trader in the East, living for a while in Singapore. During the first Gulf War he acted as an oil advisor for the Pakistani government building upon contacts born from his time at Oxford University with Benazir Bhutto. The Guardian don't like him much because of the oil connection. He also courted controversy by publishing his book 'Saturn's Children' (subtitled 'How the State Devours the Individual') in which he suggested the legalisation of all drugs.
His views may be extreme, his methods unsubtle and his Middle Eastern friends a touch on the shady side, but Duncan and his ilk represent the way forward for a party that has for the past decade linked fiscal liberty to social conformity. A socially liberal homosexual dwarf may not be the right man for the Tory Party yet, but getting social issues and a libertarian agenda back on the Tory table has got to be good for the party in the long run.
Duncan: Punches above weight
The diminutive Duncan, MP for the idyllic, and very safe, seat of Rutland and Melton in Leicestershire, is one of the few true libertarians in the Conservative party. Considered Thatcherite until his social ideals were fully understood, Duncan is both economically and socially liberal.
Duncan also has a degree of baggage that would give good sport to the press: he made is fortune as an oil trader in the East, living for a while in Singapore. During the first Gulf War he acted as an oil advisor for the Pakistani government building upon contacts born from his time at Oxford University with Benazir Bhutto. The Guardian don't like him much because of the oil connection. He also courted controversy by publishing his book 'Saturn's Children' (subtitled 'How the State Devours the Individual') in which he suggested the legalisation of all drugs.
His views may be extreme, his methods unsubtle and his Middle Eastern friends a touch on the shady side, but Duncan and his ilk represent the way forward for a party that has for the past decade linked fiscal liberty to social conformity. A socially liberal homosexual dwarf may not be the right man for the Tory Party yet, but getting social issues and a libertarian agenda back on the Tory table has got to be good for the party in the long run.
