Honourable Traditions, Worthy Successors

In an age when Geoff Hoon and John Major count as elder statesmen, one can hardly expect too much from the title of "Tory grandee," which Britain's free and fearless Press has duly conferred upon the pickled gammon David Davis. Having dutifully defended the National Johnson to his constituents, only to find his famous negotiating skills nearly as effective as when he went up against the Nazi Euro-wogs without a piece of paper, Davis sought to preserve his honour by delegating a spad to hunt up a quote. "In the name of God, go" was first uttered by Oliver Cromwell, who let the Jews back into England after four hundred years, presumably against the advice of the Daily Mail; but Davis and his servant were most likely thinking of Leo Amery, whose thoughts on national self-determination as a facile slogan and the superior advantages of large supra-national blocs would presumably get him precipitately expelled from the modern Conservative Party. However, in May 1940 Amery went some way towards atoning for this treason by using Cromwell's phrase to attack his own prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who resigned within days and was dead of cancer within months. Whatever Amery's ancestral sins as a Hungarian Jew, not even David Davis could deny his dedication to the principles of modern Conservatism in using a national crisis as the excuse to put the boot into a terminal cancer victim.