Blair Woos the 'Mad As Hell' Vote ; Tory Infighting has Cheered Up the Government. But Tony Blair's Main Problem in This Election Remains His Own Party's Hostility Over the Iraq War

Summary

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IF HOWARD Flight, the loose-tongued Tory former deputy chairman, did not exist, the Government would have had to invent him. In fact, they pretty much had done just that in a scare campaign over a projected Pounds 35 billion "cut" in expenditure under a Tory government.

It was thus doubly convenient that Mr Flight should imply that modest savings proposed by Mr Howard were only the starting signal for a more radical decrease in some sort of hidden agenda to be unleashed if his party won power.

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Blair Woos the 'Mad As Hell' Vote ; Tory Infighting has Cheered Up the Government. But Tony Blair's Main Problem in This Election Remains His Own Party's Hostility Over the Iraq War

Mr Howard's intemperate reaction in stripping Mr Flight not only of his candidacy, but also of the party whip, was a bad call. It has succeeded only in emboldening the Arundel MP to turn a crisis into a multi-part drama, first refusing to go and now bandying lawyers with Central Office. Mr Flight's ...

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