Full House

The news has just come through that Kenneth Clarke has been eliminated in the first round of the Tory leadership contest. So whatever happens now, it is guaranteed that a neo-conservative, pro-war candidate will win and that once again, in the next General Election both our leading parties will be agreeing on foreign policy. What sort of democracy is it that the views of the majority of the electorate (and indeed the views of grass-roots Tories, many of whom opposed the war)- can be treated with such contempt? The neo-conservatives did all they could to prevent Kenneth Clarke making it through to the final ballot, so petrified were they that he might win and then follow a less hawkish, and less pro-American foreign policy line. Ken we were told was too old, too lazy, and horror of horrors- was a director of a tobacco company (neo-conservative concern over the dangers of tobacco only seem to have arisen when Clarke announced his candidature).
Henry Ford once said that his customers could have any colour car they liked, so long as it was black.
Neo-conservative democracy says we can have party leader we like- so long as they sign up to Shock and Awe and the imposition of free market economies by B52s.