Impending Halfhead

So. The Tory party has jilted Ken Clarke once more. Excuse me while I stifle a yawn.

I've always found the support for Clarke amongst people who don't vote Conservative inexplicable. If, like me, you'd rather crawl naked over broken glass than vote Tory, why would you care who their leader is? Perhaps Clarke is the only person who can lead the party out of the wilderness, if so you'll excuse me if I don't mourn his defeat. No doubt pro-Clarke leftys can and will point to the absence of a decent Parliamentary opposition to the Blair regime. This might be fair enough if the Tories even vaguely came close to what I believe in. I seriously doubt that even an invigorated Tory opposition is going to pull Neo Labour towards supporting any of the things I believe in. They could just as easily have the opposite effect (what do you mean privatising the police is a bad idea?). You want opposition? Don't just wait around for somebody else to do it, go oppose.

As for Clarke's supposed progressive credentials? Recall that this is a man who since 1998 has been the director of British American Tobacco, a company eager to support emerging democracies in Burma, Uzbekistan and North Korea; a man who is apparently supportive of the database state; and a man who as a student invited Oswald Mosley to speak at Cambridge Union not once, but twice. I'm sure he's a nice enough fellow, but if he really is our best hope things are worse than I'd thought.