[A-List] Test, ignore

[Michael Keaney <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

The Conservative Party continues to disintegrate, as a former defence and
foreign secretary (who brought miners' strike breaker David Hart into the
defence ministry as an adviser, to be retained by Michael Portillo when he
was there) attacks the current leader for not being critical enough of
Blair. The trouble is, as Malcolm probably knows only too well (from his
experience in handling the Balkans under Major), that the Rumsfeld
Republicans have such a grip over Iain Duncan Smith that the latter cannot
do anything but slavishly follow a pro-US line. Sooner or later it will
dawn on the Bush administration that, politically speaking, the
Conservative Party is dead in the water. Step forward "Lord" David Owen,
always handy in a crisis, who can help set up a new US-backed party
designed to occupy the "centre" between New Labour and punk Thatcherism,
led, perhaps, by a newly invigorated Michael Portillo. This party will
accept the EU as a given, but campaign against UK eurozone membership,
along the lines of Owen's "New Europe" outfit.