From William Hague's speech to the Tory Spring Conference this morning...
There they were when we met at Blackpool last October, talking of nothing but an imminent election with the arrogant over-confidence that comes from too long in power. Neil Kinnock was even there to say that an election would be called and the Tories would be ‘ground in to the dust’. A triumphalist Kinnock - a sure sign that everything was about to come to grief.
For it turned out within hours that the Prime Minister who had calculated on an early election before he was found out had been rumbled already; that the leader who had prepared for the battle did not have the bottle to begin it; and it has since turned out that he is the same leader who agrees a European Treaty but can’t decide whether to attend the ceremony, calls a minister incompetent but couldn’t decide whether to sack him, calls a review of round the clock drinking but then can’t decide to go ahead and put a stop to it as he should; this is the Prime Ditherer of the nation. He reminds me of the American state Governor who once said ‘I’m not indecisive. Or am I?’
Perhaps this is no surprise, but for me the truly astounding fact we have discovered in recent months is that a Cabinet without John Prescott and Margaret Beckett is less competent than the Cabinet when they were in it.
Not only have they lost the bank account details of every family in the country and let out thousands of criminals early because they failed to plan for prison places, but we have a Home Secretary who is scared to walk down the street and a Chancellor who appeared to have dreamt he was delivering the budget and then woke up to find that he was."
From William Hague's speech to the Tory Spring Conference this morning...
13 comments:
can we hear the speech anywhere? I cant find it on the Conservative party site
Is this chap in any way related to the William Hague who repeatedly assured us in 2001 that we had only x days to save the pound (where x was a small and diminishing number tending to zero)?
I think we should be told.
Bravo!!!!
"then can’t decide to go ahead and put a stop to it as he should"
If he means stop the pointless review, fine. If he means stop people having the ability to apply to open their business 24 hours a day, then he's an illiberal *rse.
No, Eric The Fish. That was a different William Hague.
Hague and competence - yes, 'save the pound' from the back of a lorry, won one seat, said the election was a referendum on the euro (hahaha), made Ann Widdecombe Shadow Home Secretary despite knowing that her views on drugs would criminalise half of the shadow cabinet. Claimed it was "already time for a change" after Labour had been in for two years. Y-e-e-e-e-e-e-s, as Jeremy Paxman would sneer.
You Tories really do need to careful that you don't "inhale" too much. Why, after the dreadful, appalling six months that Brown has had, and the Lib Dems being nowhere, are the Tories not miles ahead in the polls? I'd be genuinely interested in an answer to that from a Conservative perspective, rather than the usual "Hague's a God, Labour are useless" stuff.
Haig is by far the best speaker in the Commons today. (Mind you, not much competition.) He must remain in the front rank of politics.
Love him.
Give him his own show...oh, forgot, BBC don't do that to tories.
It is one of the great tragedies of modern politics that Hague got the leadership in 1997, rather than waiting another eight years to stand. He would have made a superb leader against a disintegrating Brown government.
"Give him his own show...oh, forgot, BBC don't do that to tories."
Portillo?
Good old Hague - in 2001, he was the right man at the wrong time.
The people who said we’d miss Blair once he was gone were proved to be correct, but to imagine we’d think fondly of young Prescott and that girl with the caravan…
I note the Number 10 apologists are out in force.....what a worried lot they must be!
Facing Total oblivion at the next election. What will the Cabinet do for a job then?
Straw - an ineffectual QC.
Home Sec back to teaching at the kindergarten.
Mr and Mrs Balls. Job Centre Plus! The boy foreign secretary - Secretary of the Communist Party (out of respect for Dad!) The other Milliband - a porter at a garden centre.
Geoff Hume - Another poor QC doing AA defense work at Magistrates Courts.
Browne the Defence/Scottish Secreatry. A tour guide in the Caingorms? Mrs Harman. Womens |Hour on the BBC advice line for wimin!
All those useless MP's without expenses to live on! Let us send them all four white feathers.
Gosh, I cannot wait.
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