Portrait of the Week – 2 April 2005

Mr Howard Flight who, many were surprised to learn, was deputy chairman of the Conservative party, had the whip withdrawn and was told by Mr Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, that he could not stand for Parliament as a Conservative candidate after he addressed a dinner of the Conservative Way Forward association. When discussing savings in public expenditure identified by the James report, Mr Flight told the meeting, ‘The real issue is, having won power, do you then go for it?’ This was presented by Labour as an admission of secretly planned cuts. When Mr Flight refused to go quietly, the row overshadowed the embarrassment in the Labour party about the advice given by Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, on the legality of the war against Iraq; it was clear that he had changed his mind, but the government was not saying how. Lord Callaghan, who as James Callaghan was prime minister from the resignation of Harold Wilson in 1976 until the election victory of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in 1979, died on the day before his 93rd birthday.