A warm welcome to Norman Tebbit, who has just started blogging at the Telegraph. Tebbit’s blog is likely to make uncomfortable reading for Conservative Central Office, and the Chingford skinhead takes just 118 words to launch a thinly veiled attack on David Cameron.
He writes:
Grittiness and the stiff upper lip seem to have been replaced with emotional incontinence, political correctness and open-necked shirts worn with well-cut suits.
And his contempt for Cameron (one feels he can’t bear to mention him by name) is deliberately contrasted with his admiration for Gordon Brown. Of the Prime Minister, he says:
About the only leading politican to show any [grit] these days seems to be the much-abused Prime Minister Brown.
Like other conservatives (Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre among them), Tebbit respects and admires Brown for his intellect, his work ethic and his Presbyterian conscience.
Tebbit’s appreciation for Brown is well established, but perhaps more surprising is his praise for Clement Attlee, the man who vanquished the Tory party in 1945 and oversaw the nationalisation of one-fifth of the economy.
Of Attlee, he laments: “Would that we had a leader of any party to compare with him.”
Tebbit’s political views still make me shudder, but if his blog continues to be this contrarian and independent-minded it’s well worth bookmarking, I’d say.
Follow the New Statesman team on Twitter
Content from our partners
Related
