The current Conservative leadership contest has been absolutely fascinating to watch. There is so much that one can learn from it – but not in the way they would have wanted.

Most striking is the ruthless way most of the candidates have set about destroying their opponents. Dirty tricks aplenty, briefing negative gossip about them to the media, dismissing their achievements and barefaced lying….. But we have to remember that this is their normal modus operandi – they do this all the time. And in this case, they are supposedly in the same party…..

I cannot help remembering when we worked in coalition with them, though it seems a different era now. Several of our leading ministers suddenly found negative stories about them in the press, and were forced out of office. Of course, their past actions should have been beyond reproach. But in two of the most outstanding cases, their downfall had been preceded in one case by a public splat with George Osborne, and in the other by praise the the press comparing the competence of the two men.

The lesson to take from this is that the Tories will always fight dirty. They should not be trusted. If they cannot find a negative story about us, they will make one up. I have experienced this myself. Fortunately, local people knew me, and did not believe a word of it, and my majority went up from 29 to over 600.

But one cannot but wonder what decent tradition Conservatives make of it all…..

   Leave a comment