From: Peeler
Category: Other stuff
Date: 21 August 2001
Although it will condemn them to unelectability, my gut says they will choose Duncan Smith as their leader. Clarke seems reckless like a man who knows he's going to lose, telling people to get out the party if they disagree with his philo-Europeanism, or dismissing Thatcher's endorsement as worthless or even harmful. She is their heroine and totem, the woman who transformed Britain into an enterprise economy, stopped the strikes, and won the war, and her views must not be taken lightly. Either way Labour win for now. Duncan Smith is too doctrinaire and charmless to appeal to the television electorate, while Clarke will crack the Tories in two, leaving them helplessly exposed to Labour thrusts on Europe. Both are curious and old fashioned, unless people are unusually perverse, neither will fit as PM against the normal and reasonable Blair. We must ask what will Labour do with their privileges of a huge majority and a decimated opposition with no credible future leader. They never dreamed it would be like this, and seem to know not how to use their luck. They must be careful for power unplanned and uncontrolled will destroy its holders.
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