Posted on 09/01/2004 6:56:57 AM PDT by Area Freeper
A Convention for British Bush-backers this week would not need Madison Square Garden. A Manhattan milk bar would do -- room enough for Tony Blair, a tiny band of his ministers and a rather larger contingent from the Opposition Conservatives.
One of those at that bar should be the new leader of the British Conservative Party, Michael Howard, former minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments and her successor as probably the most deeply committed Atlanticist in the House of Commons. Yet Mr. Howard has been left out in the street and, thanks to a fresh flurry of leaks to newspapers in London, left out very publicly, "snubbed" as the headline writers like to say.
Few in New York will care. There is no more humbling experience for a new British leader -- even an election-winner like John Major -- than to expect notice in America. But in Britain people care. Last February, it seems, Mr. Howard learnt that there was no point in his hoping to see George W. Bush, no point in his hoping for a common courtesy which the White House bestows on its friends. "Don't bother coming" was the curt response attributed to Karl Rove.
Mr. Howard's crime has been to be the opponent of Tony Blair. While supporting the war in Iraq -- which he called "necessary, just, arguably overdue and overwhelmingly successful" -- he has attacked the false premises in Prime Minister Blair's presentation of the case for war. He has attempted -- not always well but ever doggedly -- to exploit the consequent enquiries into those failures. While not quite shouting "Resign, resign," he has uttered the code words that Mr. Blair should "consider his position."
The job of Her Majesty's Leader of the Opposition has no precise equivalent in America. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I believe it's Mr. Howard being snubbed, not the Tories.
Mr. Howard made remarks clearly showing that he was against the war on terror, President Bush and Tony Blair.
After the support PM Tony Blair has given President Bush, that's not going to stand.
The Tories ejected their last leader in 2003 because he was too friendly towards Blair
Howard clearly doesn't want to suffer the same fate
Right. The GOP is snubbing Howard the same way it is snubbing Pan Buchannan.
Don't most Tories support Howard's position on the war?
You cannot say you support the war and simultaneously jump on the "I am a silly idiot who cannot think more than one layer deep so I am going to be an opportunist and question the reasons we went to war just because we found no stockpiles but we did find programs" crowd. You gave the answer in your own article.
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