[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.