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workshop that says 'You don't have to be
mad to work here, but it helps'. So it is with membership of today's
Conservative Party. What the election of Iain Duncan Smith has proved is that
61 per cent of the Tory membership are completely insane. Ken Clarke knew he'd
lost when he saw that a majority of the envelopes to Central Office were
addressed in green ink. Suddenly it was official: three out of five Tory
members believe that the Earth is flat, that Elvis was abducted by aliens and
that Iain Duncan Smith has the best chance of leading them to victory.
    Yet people were still surprised by the new
leader's choice of shadow cabinet. When lunatics take over the asylum, they
don't reassure everyone by announcing a bi-annual audit and getting the
photocopier serviced. They make the bloke who thinks he's Napoleon head of
carpet-chewing and abolish Tuesdays. So wearing his big badge that says 'Lose
Votes Now, Ask Me How', Iain Duncan Smith has appointed a shadow cabinet that
is the logical extension of the collective madness that has seized the Tory
Party Electoral appeal and political effectiveness do not matter - Europe is
the only issue. With the final rejection of Ken Clarke, the Tories have ceased
to be a political party and are now a single-issue pressure group. 'I'm going
to lobby my MP night and day. Now - who is my MP? Oh it's me, isn't it.' For
IDS, all roads lead to the Treaty of Rome. Expecting him to put Europhiles in
prominent positions would be like asking the RSPB to have a couple of cats on
the executive to even things up. 'Do we have to have Kitty on the committee?
She keeps dragging half-dead pigeons into meetings.'
    Ken Clarke was always fighting an uphill
battle in a party whose average age was 117. Conservative organizers took this
into account and so the wording on the ballot paper said in extra large print:
'WHO DO YOU WANT AS TORY LEADER, DEAR? I SAID, WHO DO YOU WANT TO VOTE FOR AS
TORY LEADER? NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE WINSTON; HE'S DEAD, DEAR.' But amazingly,
Clarke still made it to the final two in what had become the most thrilling
political contest for days. For one of them it would mean a future in the
wilderness, disappearing from public life for ever. But for Ken, it would mean
going back to working for British American Tobacco. 'I look forward to working
with Ken,' said IDS in his victory speech, so I suppose we can expect to see
the new Tory leader flogging fags out in Vietnam as well. IDS is the first Tory
leader not to have served as a minister and looks set to keep it that way. The
result was only the second decision the Tory rank and file has ever had to
make, the first one being when they chose Jeffrey Archer as their candidate for
Mayor of London.
    One
week later IDS has assembled a Tory front bench that perfectly reflects the
outdated reactionary views of the people who elected him. Normally we only get
to hear these sorts of opinion when the grandparents come to stay at
Christmas. 'I don't know why they have to have all these queers in showbusiness
nowadays. In my day we had proper gentlemen like Rock Hudson and Noel Coward.'
And you half choke on your turkey but stop yourself saying anything because
there's really no point. Now it'll be like that in the House of Commons -
everyone will sit there patiently, silently smiling to one another until the
shadow minister has finished his little rant about the foreigners and then
they'll just carry on as if they hadn't heard him. 'Well, it's not worth
getting into an argument - it's only the opposition.'
    It
seems to be the received opinion that a weak Conservative Party is bad for
democracy, but excuse me if I don't shed too many tears. I agree that we have
to have an opposition, but the present government needs to be pulled to the
left, not the right. The Scottish Assembly's decisions on tuition fees and care
for the elderly offer a visible working alternative - that's a real
opposition. What is required is sustained pressure to push the