Feedback | 15 January 2005

Don’t blame Davis

My old friend Bruce Anderson doubtless wishes to do his friends in the Notting Hill set some good by blaming the continued poor Conservative showing upon David Davis (Politics, 8 January). But he is unjust. Mr Davis has claimed two ministerial scalps, and not just through good luck but rather through hard work and good judgment. Since he took over his brief, the Conservative party has achieved a substantial lead on both crime and immigration.

If Bruce wishes to point the finger of blame, it should surely be at the absence of an attractive and persuasive Tory economic policy. But it must also be at those closest to Michael Howard. Having been lectured at length by Mr Howard about ‘accountability’ at the party conference, I imagine that party members will hold accountable those most directly responsible for any election strategy which fails. And that, of course, is why those around Mr Howard are seeking to parachute in one of their own without reference to the wider party. Fortunately, I suspect that not even Bruce Anderson’s eloquence will make that putsch acceptable.
Robin Harris
London SW11

It is a pity that Bruce Anderson’s final flourish did not embody accurately the chilling image of ‘the feathers of death’. An anonymous seaman writing to tell Queen Elizabeth I of his eagerness to lay down his life for her cause produced the splendid words: ‘The wings of man’s life are plumed with the feathers of death.’ Political death rarely warrants such dramatic language, but it might need to be borne in mind not in relation to the Tory leadership, which has enthusiasm for life, but to the extraordinary struggle between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
Alistair Cooke
London SW1

Towards a new Europe

I read with interest Peter Jones’s argument that as ‘tribalism finished Rome it will finish Brussels too’ (Ancient & modern, 1 January).