"Don't Mess With Me", Cameron Warns Tebbit

On top of the all the expenses stuff, we now have Lord Tebbit calling on voters to boycott the three main parties in the June elections. Norman Tebbit is one of my political heroes and I am very sad that he feels the need to say this. He may be riding with the tide, but for a former party chairman to openly encourage people to vote for another party is not something which the party whips or leader can ignore.

At his press conference earlier David Cameron warned Lord Tebbit that he was walking a tightrope and had better not fall off it, otherwise "he'll find himself sitting as an independent".

It needed to be said.

This is the stuff of which leaders are made. Something which Lord Tebbit himself would acknowledge, I suspect.

Norman Tebbit Refuses to Forgive Brighton Bomber

There's a very moving interview with Norman Tebbit in the Daily Mail today. It centres on his life with his wife Margaret. This section stood out for me...

This week, back in the real world, Tebbit summoned up that old rage quite
effortlessly. He was informed that the subject of the Radio 4 programme The
Reunion - in which people affected by a particular historical event are brought
together - would be the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984,
which left five of his friends dead and his wife paralysed. He was asked if
he would like to take part. The bomber, Patrick Magee, had also been
invited. Tebbit was furious. So much has changed since that terrible night
when he was plucked from the rubble live on TV, but his feelings of impotence
and rage are as vivid now as they were then. "I wrote telling them the only
reunion I'd be happy to attend was the one where Magee was reunited with a
bomb," he says. "People do expect you to mellow, but that is not easy when you
wake every morning to be reminded about the fact that your wife can't get out of
bed," he admits.

I am sure there would be plenty of volunteers to light the fuse.