An old Washington cliche has it that a gaffe is what happens when a politician inadvertently blurts out the truth or, in a variation on the theme, reveals what he really thinks.
Enter Lord Howell. In ordinary circumstances Peer Says Something Daft might be thought as newsworthy as Friday Follows Thursday but Lord Howell is not some backwoods eccentric. He’s a former cabinet minister and, more pertinently, George Osborne’s father-in-law. Perhaps this should not matter but it does just as there’s a certain frisson felt when David Cameron’s father-in-law criticises government policy.
So Lord Howell’s remarks that fracking be concentrated in the dismal desolate shires of northern England are interesting because they appear to confirm what we already know but rarely say; namely that the Conservative party is largely a regional, not a national, party.
Of course there are notable exceptions but, in general, the Tories are a party of southern England.
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