Wednesday 28 March 2007

This is really very strange...

David Cameron and George Osborne (am I alone in having noticed how camp he is?) now sit atop the Conservative Party, having both been MPs only since 2001, and neither having done very much at all, politically or otherwise, up to then. Cameron is MP for Witney, and Osborne for Tatton. These are both super-safe Tory seats.

But in 2001, they were both in peculiar positions. At Witney, Shaun Woodward had defected to Labour, who had then shoe-horned him at St Helens North for the General Election. And at Tatton, Martin Bell had defeated Neil Hamilton in 1997, before standing down (as he had promised to do) in 2001.

So Cameron and Osborne can both claim to have taken back previously Tory seats from someone else, even though, under any normal circumstances (such as obtained in both cases in 2001), the seats in question were both rock-solid Tory, and even though neither has ever had to face a sitting MP seeking re-election.

And now it is, of all Tories, these two Bullingdon Club members, of almost no political or other experience, who are running the Conservative Party, and aspiring to run the country.

It is all very, very strange...

No comments:

Post a Comment