Bush will not be mocked

Mark Steyn says it’s time for limp, languid Tory toffs to join the fight for freedom

New Hampshire

On the eve of the Iraq election, the Times treated us to a riveting columnar collaboration: ‘We need to fix an exit timetable, say Robin Cook, Douglas Hurd and Menzies Campbell’ — in perfect harmony. To modify Churchill, defeat may be an orphan, but defeatism has many fathers, and these three were in tripartisan agreement about what a disaster Iraq had been.

You’d have got a better idea of how election day was likely to proceed from that week’s Speccie, which blared across its cover ‘Iraq — the unreported triumph: Mark Steyn says that things are going Bush’s way’ — though I got the vague feeling the editors intended the headline parodically and were setting Humpty Steyny up for a helluva fall. One of the unsettling aspects of the post-9/11 world is that, while my columns in US newspapers merely have to heap scorn and derision upon Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Michael Moore and Barbra Streisand, in the United Kingdom I find myself principally in disagreement with Lord Hurd, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Sir Max Hastings, Sir Simon Jenkins, Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, Mr Matthew Parris and (according to what side of bed he’s gotten out of) Mr Michael Howard.