TORY leader Michael Howard has been barred from the White House

TORY leader Michael Howard has been barred from the White House and told he will never meet President George Bush, it emerged last night.

The bombshell ban was slapped on Mr Howard after he called for Tony Blair to quit over the Iraq War.

And it was reinforced last month when he said he would have vetoed military action if he had known the full facts about Iraq’s WMD arsenal.

Last night, a spokesman for Mr Howard did not even try to deny the Tory leader had been banned from meeting the President.

The wrath of the President was transmitted to Mr Howard’s office in a furious phone call from White House political chief Karl Rove in February.

What particularly upset the White House was Mr Howard’s comment: “If I were Prime Minister I would seriously be considering my position.”

They were also angered when the Tory leader accused the PM of “serious dereliction of duty”.

Mr Rove, who speaks with the President’s full authority, said: “You can forget about meeting the President full stop. Don’t bother coming, you are not meeting him.”

Far from backing down, a defiant Mr Howard stepped up his attack over the so-called “dodgy dossier” and the 45-minute warning of attack by Iraqi WMD.

Referring to Tory support for the Commons vote which led to war, he said: “If I knew then what I know now, I could not have voted for the resolution.”

But it now emerges that Mr Howard was accurately reflecting his criticism not just of Mr Blair but of Mr Bush as well.

His stand shook top Tories, including party chairman Liam Fox who is flying to New York in a bid to patch up the rift at the Republican convention.

And it has deeply damaged the decades-long alliance between the Republicans and the Conservative Party.

Senior US Right-wingers blame Mr Howard for undermining the coalition in Iraq and say they are privately rooting for a Labour victory in the next election.

A Tory source said: “They see Tony Blair as a true ally against terror and the Tories as a bunch of w*****s.”

The stand-off is particularly surprising in view of Mr Howard’s long standing admiration for America.

He set up the Atlantic Partnership, a think-tank which welcomes regular visits from Republican figures.

Senior Tories are amazed that the White House fury has remained a secret for so long.

But Mr Howard’s spokesman insisted he had not been barred from the Republican Convention.

A new poll showed them still scoring only 34 per cent, the same as Labour, with little prospect of a breakthrough.

Sounds pretty paleoconservative, a.k.a. Buchanan Brigade, eh? ;') Prefer a Labour Party, the majority of which may now oppose Blair? I've never bought into the comparison of Blair with Clinton. I've watched some UK Parliament broadcasts over the years, and remember Blair thanking John Major for his quiet, behind the scenes support for some kind of thing or other (may have been the Gulf War?). Most of the UK Conservatives don't agree with this bonehead, just as most Americans didn't agree with the Dixie Bitch.

Being a Tory gets easier by the minute
by Ed Vaizey
Sunday August 24, 2003
The Conservative Party conference in Blackpool in early October should go some way to answer the poser... By the time conference comes around, Iain Duncan Smith will have been Tory leader for just over two years. Duncan Smith is credited by his party with reconnecting the Conservatives with the public's agenda, something that they failed to do in 2001. As one strategist puts it, 'we are now starting to have policies on the issues that keep people awake at night'. Such issues do not include Europe, a subject where Duncan Smith has succeeded in turning down the volume. They do include, though, schools, hospitals and crime... Without having to look at a crib sheet, I can tell you that the Conservatives would abolish tuition fees, make exam bodies independent, put 40,000 more policemen on the street over the next decade, fund 20,000 more drug rehabilitation places, introduce a health passport and tackle the issue of funded pensions with a long-term savings plan... Better still, Government errors are seized on with a little more alacrity. Peter Hain's recent musings on the need to impose even higher taxes on middle-income earners was like the whiff of grapeshot to old Tory dogs. The new-found enthusiasm took me back to the hunger the Tories felt in the 1992 election campaign... A million more people now pay higher rate income tax, and average income families now face the prospect for the first time of an inheritance tax bill, because of rising property prices. The Tory mantra is likely to be that real reform, not higher taxes, means better public services. And better public services can therefore exist with lower taxes.
Galloway expelled by Labour
BBC
24 October, 2003
Labour chairman Ian McCartney insisted that party had been right to expel a man who "incited foreign forces to rise up against British troops".

"He was the only Labour MP to do this and he has never taken back or apologised for these comments," he said... He faced five charges relating to a television interview during the war in which he accused Mr Blair and George Bush of acting "like wolves" in invading Iraq.

The charges faced by Mr Galloway were understood to be that:

he incited Arabs to fight British troops

he incited British troops to defy orders

he incited Plymouth voters to reject Labour MPs

he threatened to stand against Labour

he backed an anti-war candidate in Preston
He was found guilty of all but the third charge.

The law he violated has been on the books since 1934.

Howard is beneath contempt in his approach on this matter. This entry from Stephen Pollard sums things up quite nicely.

http://www.stephenpollard.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/581 For American readers: If you'd like to express your appreciation of Tony Blair's support for the war in Iraq, here's a site which will let you. For UK readers: We have a more direct option. Come the next election, we can either vote for Michael Howard, whose behaviour in recent months over Iraq has been damn-near contemptible; we can vote for the preposterous Charles Kennedy, who favoured keeping Saddam in power; or we can vote for a leader who is prepared to stand up to terror, to defend the West, and to remove tyrants. Hmmm. Difficult choice. UPDATE: One of my commenters makes a very good point. In labelling Howard as 'damn-near contemptible' and Kennedy as only 'preposterous' I imply that Howard is worse than Kennedy, and surely it should be the other way round. Howard did, after all, support the war, whereas Kennedy campaigned for a genocidal maniac to remain in power. Quite right. My labels were misjudged in their application. I stand corrected.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.