Never has there been a politician to have fallen so foul of the Eric Morecambe mistake of playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, as William Hague.
The former Conservative leader spent the first years of this century as a hardline EU-sceptic and telling voters that lax immigration policies were turning swathes of the country into ‘a foreign land’. The electorate at the time proved largely impervious to these arguments, perhaps because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown seemed to be delivering better living standards and most of the country had not yet experienced the community-shredding delights of hyper-migration.
But following a terrible beating by Blair at the 2001 election and then a spell as shadow foreign secretary, warning that the Lisbon Treaty would steal essential British sovereignty permanently, Hague lost faith in his ‘kitchen table conservatism’ and instead bought heavily into the ‘heir to Blair’ agenda of David Cameron, George Osborne and their coalition partner Nick Clegg.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in