Pubdate: Wed, 12 Oct 2005
Source: Belfast Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/42
Author: Matthew d'Ancona

TORY MPS WOULD BE MAD TO TURN AGAINST CAMERON BECAUSE OF DRUGS

The best Conservative leadership campaign of the past quarter-century
was run by Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. Whatever mistakes IDS went on to
make as Tory leader, the strategy he employed to get the job was flawless.

Late to declare his candidacy, he first allowed the media to get their
teeth into the favourites, Michael Portillo and Kenneth Clarke. Then -
and lethally - he orchestrated the caricaturing of Mr Portillo's
modernising agenda as a faddish irrelevance: "pashmina politics", as
IDS called it.

At a meeting of the 1922 Committee, one of Mr Duncan Smith's
lieutenants, Julian Brazier, pressed Mr Portillo on Section 28. Mr
Portillo said, honestly enough, that he might review the law governing
the promotion of homosexuality by town halls - generating exactly the
headlines that Mr Duncan Smith had hoped for.

The MPs and media scented blood: as the hustings continued, Mr
Portillo was asked about gay marriage, Section 28 and - repeatedly -
drugs. The modernisers' true intention was to broaden the appeal of
the Conservative Party. Mr Duncan Smith's genius was to misrepresent
them as fixated with sideshow issues - with the heavy implication that
the Portillistas were themselves no strangers to outrageous hedonism
and decadence.

So it is no surprise to find that the most outspoken moderniser in the
2005 contest, David Cameron, is facing a similar attack. Asked at his
party's Blackpool conference whether he had ever taken drugs, the
shadow education secretary replied that he had "had a normal
university experience", but declined to go further.

Cross-examined on the same matter by Andrew Marr on the BBC's Sunday
AM (as Marr recounts on the facing page), he asked, with visible
exasperation: "Are we going to have some sort of McCarthyite hearings
into every Member of Parliament?"

The answer to Mr Cameron's own question is probably "Yes": he will
find the scrutiny even more searching now that Sir Malcolm Rifkind has
withdrawn from the race, leaving only four candidates. Last week, Sir
Malcolm gave a polished conference speech. No matter: he would
certainly have been eliminated from the race on Tuesday in the first
round of voting by MPs.

His decision to depart now and to back Kenneth Clarke is an attempt to
revive the former chancellor's campaign, which has been damaged by the
surge to Mr Cameron. With the race narrowing and his fellow contenders
scrambling for Sir Malcolm's declared and undeclared supporters, Mr
Cameron will face ever closer questioning from colleagues and
journalists alike.

None the less, he is right to stick to his (already pretty candid)
answer on the drugs question, and to say no more. Should it emerge
that, against all available evidence, Mr Cameron, Kate Moss and Pete
Doherty share a dealer, and that this apparently straightforward
politician is, in fact, a chemically challenged maniac, he would be
finished anyway.

For now, the trap being set by Mr Cameron's enemies is clear. They
want him to elaborate, to be drawn into details, to contaminate his
campaign with the whiff of ganja. At the moment, he is associated with
an excellent speech in Blackpool and an energetic plan to change his
party.

His opponents long to associate him with sex and drugs and trust-fund 
libertines. As Terry Jones put it in Monty Python's Life of Brian: "He's 
not the Messiah! He's a very naughty boy!" This is all nonsense. There are 
legitimate reasons for MPs not to vote for Mr Cameron next week. His speech 
in Blackpool was better than David Davis's. By contrast, his appearance on 
Sunday AM was not as good as Mr Davis's on The Politics Show on the same day.

Interviewed in his constituency, the shadow home secretary was
everything that he was not at the Tory conference: relaxed,
conversational, emotional about his constituents and his duty to them.
Anyone who has watched the full interview, incidentally, will see that
his attack on "charlatanry" and "image politics" was aimed at Tony
Blair, not Mr Cameron.

If I were Mr Davis, I would not be pinning my hopes of political
recovery on parliamentary combat or platform speeches. I would be
heading for the GMTV sofa, This Morning and The Wright Stuff. To
improve his chances, Mr Davis does not need Punch and Judy. He needs
Richard and Judy.

Rhetorical power, broadcasting talent, grasp of policy, capacity both
to unite and to change the party: all these are sound criteria for
Tory MPs to apply next Tuesday. But to vote for or against a candidate
because he may or may not have smoked a joint or two at university
would be insanity. This leadership contest has already been marred by
class war; it does not need a class-C war, too.

For someone of my age, I suppose I have quite a stuffy attitude
towards illegal drugs. But I know a bogus political argument when I
hear one.

The attempt to affix the garish label "Drugs!" to the side of the
Cameron bandwagon is the worst sort of attack by proxy. In fact, it is
merely the latest manifestation of one of the oldest battles within
the Conservative Party.

In 1965, Lady Douglas-Home warned that, in the contest to choose a
successor to her husband, the Tories might become "such a shiny bright
new party [that] no one will recognise the true Conservatives in it".

Four decades later, the modern variant is to accuse anyone who says
that the party needs to change of being "metropolitan". The word
carries with it dark connotations, suggesting wicked dinner parties,
spoilt brats with terrible plans to subvert the moral order and turn
us all into dope-addled deviants.

Of course, the whole point about the Tory party today is that it is
not "metropolitan" enough. As Mr Davis pointed out on this page
yesterday, Britain's great cities have become an electoral wasteland
for the Conservatives. According to the 2001 Census, 45 per cent of
the population now live in London, the seven great conurbations and 31
other cities.

Include areas with new towns and industrial quarters and the figure
rises to a whopping 64 per cent. But - as the present electoral map
shows - the urban population feels little or no connection with the
Tory party.

Mr Davis and Mr Cameron understand this, and the corresponding need
for the Tories to adapt as a matter of urgency to the demography of
21st-century Britain. Our cities desperately need fresh policies on
education, transport, law and order and - yes - drugs.

But their inhabitants will never listen to a party that seems at war
with the modern world and responds to their problems with reactionary
fuming rather than constructive policies. The "Cannabis Cameron" row
is a huge distraction, designed to derail the Tory modernisers as an
equivalent strategy did their predecessors in 2001. It is, in every
sense of the word, a smokescreen. 
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MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFlorida)