Forget the Big Beasts of the Jungle, Today's Tory 'Leaders' Are Small Furry Animals. They May Have Sharp Teeth and Ready Claws... But They Are Not Big ; in a Personal and Provocative Essay, Peter Hitchens Argues the Tories Are On the Brink of Political Extinction and Calls for a Radical New Alternative

Summary

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The haggard patient heaves himself into a sitting position and, with painful slowness, takes a little gruel, swallowing the disgusting pap with difficulty. He, who until recently was consuming rare beef and good red wine, smiles wanly at this minor, toothless triumph. The relatives around the bed exclaim with forced delight how well he has done and how good it is to see him eating heartily again. They make weak jokes and excessively cheerful remarks about how he will soon be home again.

The whole scene is a ghastly, flesh-crawling deception. Everyone present knows that death is hovering a few beds away and there is no hope.

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Extract

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Forget the Big Beasts of the Jungle, Today's Tory 'Leaders' Are Small Furry Animals. They May Have Sharp Teeth and Ready Claws... But They Are Not Big ; in a Personal and Provocative Essay, Peter Hitchens Argues the Tories Are On the Brink of Political Extinction and Calls for a Radical New Alternative

Yet nobody will say it. Such is the position of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

Now, if the Tory Party were a person and we were its family, there would be a good excuse for this polite fraud. But the Tory Party is not a person and we are not its wife and children, or even its friends. There is no point in pretending that the Tory Party is going to recover.

The pretence only delays the construction of a new movement, which cannot flourish until we have said goodbye to the old one. It also gives the Liberal Democrats the freedom to supplant the Tory Party, unobstructed, in many of its fo...

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