The Knight’s Time

‘JUST one day after Iain Major Hague was hooked off the Tory stage, the Times spots Margaret Thatcher at large.

Shhh!

If this were the Labour Party in action, you’d be unable to stop yourself from suspecting that the sight of the former Prime Minster weeping at her husband’s funeral was more than an accident of fate.

You’d be mentally digging up the body and checking for signs of foul play – if indeed a body is there at all and not just a gin-soaked Guy.

But it pains us to say that Sir Denis Thatcher is dead and Maggie’s tears of yesterday were not designed to garner support for a challenge for the Tory leadership.

Even if she does decide on one last tilt at the top, Maggie will have to beat Michael Howard, who the papers have all decided is the Conservatives’ leader-in-waiting.

The Independent says that gregarious Kenneth Clarke has yet to decide which way to jump but, even if he does stand, the odds are shortening on Howard.

But what can we expect from the man so famously described by Ann Widdecombe as having “something of the night about him”?

We have often thought that quote was wrongly transcribed, lacking a ‘k’ before the night, making it less a reference to Howard’s shadowy presence and alluding to a sensation that you are supping with the darkest knight of them all.

The prospect of battles between Howard’s Satan and Blair’s Jesus is tantalising stuff, but Matthew Parris, writing in the Times, wants us to look anew on his former parliamentary colleague.

Parris says that if a focus group were asked to describe Howard, it would use words like “lupine”, “dangerous”, “hooded”, prowl” and “predatory”.

“But a snapshot of the Howard soul would evince a different thesaurus,” says Parris, who, afforded such a view, employs words like “upright”, “steely”, “virtuous”, “fair”, and “gritty”.

And most definitely not Iainy, Duncanish or Smithy.’

Posted: 31st, October 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink