Another Voice

Matthew Parris

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

A speech recorded in Hansard on an unspecified day in the near future

‘You have reminded me, Mr Speaker, that for a minister resigning, permission to make a Personal Statement to the House is granted entirely at your discretion and should be of an explanatory nature. With the speech of the Noble Lord, Lord Howe, in mind, I too will keep mine short: to a thousand words. Members opposite will forgive me if the burden of what I have to say is addressed to my own party even if the implications are perhaps of interest to a wider audience.

‘I can no longer serve as a minister in this Cabinet. I have come to doubt I should have accepted office in the first place. I was unsure my party was doing the right thing last year in effectively replacing one prime minister with another without a contest either within our party or at the polls.

‘My reasons for silence then were several. It would have been pointless to call for a contest unless there were colleagues prepared to precipitate it by standing. There were not; and, after hesitating, I decided I should not stand myself. I thought my right honourable friend the Prime Minister might well plan an election shortly after taking office; or that in office he might quickly prove so popular and capable that the case for a mandate fell away.

‘Neither has happened. And in drafting this speech I have tried, Mr Speaker, to find words to convey my meaning without brutality; but I cannot. My right honourable friend is not the right person for the position he holds, and many have lost confidence that he will find, or could recover, the capacity to succeed. Those many include me. It would therefore be wrong for me to continue in his Cabinet.

‘It would be gratuitous to elaborate on why I lacked confidence in a leader unless I had some private or personal explanation to divulge. I have none. I have not found my right honourable friend unpleasant as a colleague and as to his conduct of the government have no tales to tell out of school. Nor do I plan to do so later. The reasons to doubt his capacity for office are entirely public, well known, and shared today — I have to say — by a majority of my right honourable friends and (as the most recent local elections in England and Wales showed) by the public.

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The Cretan Liar

May 8th, 2008 6:36pm Report this comment

Yes, but can you learn to tell the truth and to answer a simple question Yes or No? I doubt it.

Diversity

July 31st, 2008 11:53am Report this comment

Interesting. Who could deliver that speech? Not the Strawman, it would sound false before half way through. D. Miliband? The House would get the giggles. Harriet Harman? It would sound unreal; the commentary would be written with sadness for her mental state. Hoon? Statesmanship is beyond him. Alan Johnson could deliver it, quite well. So might Ed Miliband. But the one who could deliver it with a Howe-like impact would be Alastair Darling; though he would do well to leave out references to the possibility of becoming leader himself. His chance is through colleages pushing him as a compromise candidate.

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