‘I’ve got you a Tom TugendHAT,’ a friend texted from this year’s Conservative party conference. I haven’t received it yet, but I’ll save it for Tom’s next campaign. I’m no Tory – though I’ve had plenty people try and dispute that – but if we’re to have a Conservative party then it should have sensible people like my good friend Tom at the top. And while, on this occasion, he won’t be in the leader’s chair, I have no doubt that he will play a significant part in his party’s revival.
You don’t have to be a Conservative to understand that we all have skin in the game when it comes to who the party’s next leader is, even if we don’t get a vote. His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition performs an important function in our parliamentary democracy, and who is at the head of that matters to us all. A good opposition makes for better government, and so it would have been – I’m in no doubt – if Tom had succeeded.
Perhaps it was Tom’s experience of tribal warfare in Afghanistan that predisposed him to a friendship with a Scottish Nat.
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