{Views from the Right}[8th January 1991]

[Redbook8:174][19910108:0000]{Views from the Right}[8th January 1991]

199101(08?)

[A cutting in the ms of an article in [The] G[uardian] 19901231 New Year Guardian:[p]5 headed ‘Quote...’ consists of 8 quotes from politicians, mostly from the Conservative Party, of which the first, from Norman Tebbit [MP & former cabinet minister] in February [1990], reads as follows: The word “Conservative” is now use by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose political views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the 1960s”.’]

I include this mainly because of the first quote. You have to be able to picture Norman Tebbit saying it, to get the full effect of this view from the Right. In its comprehensiveness it is almost * archetypal: managing to associate with general Leftiness in constitutional politics, several of the major apolitical attributes associated with the G~ semicircle: wetness, pinkness (of course), lack of intellectual power (or application), feelings of guilt, naivety (= lack of worldly knowledge?), perhaps even Sunset; and above all, rooting the whole lot in the 1960s.

**

*(like the man himself)

**[For the sake of balance –naturally – I feel obliged to include the second quote in the list, from the Labour MP Denis Healey, also in February [1990]: ‘While the rest of Europe is marching to confront new challenges, the Prime Minister*** is shuffling along in the opposite direction like an old bag lady’.]

***[Margaret Thatcher]

[continued]

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