>Wed Feb 26 2003 - 20:36:04 EST
>
> >Not so. In fact one of the bye products of Blair's centrist politics is
> >that the Conservative Party has virtually no where to go. Tonight Duncan
> >Smith was warned by senior party leaders essentially that he is on
> >probation.
>
>What about Kenneth "The Course Of War Had Been Decided Some Time Ago In
>Washington" Clarke? What are his chances of replacing Smith?
>
>Carl
Ian Duncan Smith (nothing as common as Smith) is an upright decent europhobic military officer whose only eccentricity is being Roman Catholic. His baldness is seen to make him unelectable as leader whereas Clarke's amiable obesity and scruffy suede shoes are seen to make him congenial and in touch with ordinary people.
IDS has just handled another sacking from Conservative Central Office with such clumsiness and lack of consultation as to be paranoid.
No one is agreed on who could be his successor but the Conservatives are likely to remain caught as an extreme right party, unlectable, or torn by internal divisions or both. Blair plays on this.
In economic terms, only Clarke represents the mainstream direction of international finance capitalism. IDS and the little Englander rightists want to keep a core Conservative Party. Their hope would have been to be more loyal to the Atlantic Alliance than Blair. But Blair has completely undercut them on this. This year has shown that there is not a lot of popular milage in Britain for a governing party to ally itself with US strategic global aims.
But Duncan Smith's politically life expectancy is shorter than Blair's.
Either way the centre of gravity is shifting leftwards while Blair practises centre right politics. That is part of the paradox.
Note another paradox. I am not a supporter of crass parliamentarism. And yesterday's vote was more massaged by patronage and influence than the Security Council's will be, but everyone agrees it was a very thoughtful debate with many good contributions. I believe that finance capitalism needs this sort of culture, which appears on the surface to be classless. Paradoxically it may also provide some opportunities for genuinely reflecting popular opinion.
Chris B