Peter Hoskin

Hurd weighs in on the 55 percent debate

Plenty of eyes on the Tory grandees at the moment.  I mean, the right of the party isn’t exactly delighted with the LibCon coalition – so the search is on for figureheads to lead the resistance.  Which is why Andrew Neil’s interview with Douglas Hurd on Staight Talk this weekend is worth paying attention to.

As it happens, Lord Hurd is quite complementary towards David Cameron and his role in organising the coalition.  Here’s the actual quote:

“I think it was a brave thing to do.  It might have gone terribly wrong, but he went straight for it and he was completely straightforward in saying this is what this is, and eventually he won what he wanted.  I think it was an act of courage and of skill, those two things which create a good politician…”

So the real interest lies in his admission that he’s “slightly uneasy” about the 55 percent rule, although he doesn’t go much further than that:

“Yes, it makes me slightly uneasy.  I’m prepared to live with it because there is that 55 per cent rule, I’m prepared to live with it, but, you know, I’m a Tory really, and Tories believe in a strong Prime Minister and a strong Prime Minister is somebody who can actually say at the end of an evening, of a bloody evening, well, that’s the way you want it, right, I’m off to the Palace.”

There’s a sense that a lot of the opposition to the LibCon coalition will coalesce around this 55 percent proposal.  As the Mail says today, David Davis is thought to be nosing around the issue – so we won’t have heard the last of it.

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