Unique Selling Point

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, has at last come up with a winner: he has somehow induced Lord Tebbit of Raleigh and Dunlop to fly off the handle with a "strongly worded" letter in tomorrow's Spectator. Tebbit accuses Daveybloke of introducing "Blair worship" as "the doctrine of modern compassionate Conservatism", and thus alienating those voters who were so brilliantly wooed by the likes of Michael Howard, Iain Duncan Smith, William Hague and Edwina Currie's little friend. He calls the Iraq invasion "bungled" - presumably Tony was weak rather than wicked - and fulminates about "sensational increases in tax without measurable improvement in services, and the debauchment of the civil service". Worst of all is Blair's record when it comes to immigrant-bashing: "It was Blair who introduced uncontrolled, unmeasured immigration of people determined not to integrate, but to establish, first ghettos, and now demands for separate legal jurisdiction". No doubt he has also failed to fiddle the unemployment figures sufficiently, or to put enough people in prison, for the satisfaction of the noble lord: "In biblical terms, Blairism is the poisonous tree which can give forth only poisonous fruit and must be rooted out."

This is, of course, a brilliant coup for Daveybloke, who has been flailing around for years "seeking to occupy the political centre ground"; or, in Oldspeak, seeking to get into power without actually offering to change anything much. War, privatisation and foreigner-baiting are all very well; but they don't add up to much of a programme as long as the Government is already doing them, even if one does have the personal advantage of not being Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. On the other hand: war, privatisation, foreigner-baiting and the implacable hatred of Lord Tebbit - now, that's the sort of manifesto an electorate can sink its teeth into.