The Quiet Man has been silenced. For months he had rasped and bellowed to get our attention, but only his gagging finally gave him a national audience. As if tuning in to watch an England penalty shoot-out or the O.J. Simpson verdict, people wanted to be near a radio or TV at seven o’clock last night — just to see the moment of public execution. Why did they do it? The toppling of Margaret Thatcher haunts some Tories even now, as they wonder what possessed them to murder their queen. But the removal of Iain Duncan Smith will puzzle no historian of the future.For the MPs who sacked him, the moment will feel cathartic, the relief of having ended a period IDS himself had described as a ‘‘vision of hell’’. A shot of adrenalin will course through the Tory body politic, the pumped-up hope that the party’s luck may be about to change. With the failed IDS gone, Conservative optimists will want to believe their new leader will lead them to a new tomorrow.But the immediate future hardly looks bright. The depth of the hole the Conservatives are in cannot be exaggerated. They have suffered two consecutive landslide defeats, and have been flatlining in the polls for more than a decade. At this stage in Labour’s wilderness years in the 1980s, Neil Kinnock had already begun the long march back to the electable centre ground. The same cannot be said of the Conservatives.(Excerpted from an article by Jonathan Freedland in ‘The Guardian’, October 30)It would be unfair to suggest that all of the Tories’ ills are the fault of Mr Duncan Smith. He cannot be blamed for the crippling lack of legitimacy that stemmed from becoming leader with the backing of little more than a third of the parliamentary party. The responsibility for that lies with the lunatic electoral system devised by his predecessor, William Hague. The fractiousness and indiscipline that afflicts the modern Conservative Party also pre-dates Mr Duncan Smith’s leadership. Mr Duncan Smith also deserves some credit for having initially realised that the Tories could make themselves electable only if they had something to say about the things that concerned their fellow citizens. That meant talking more about public services and less about Europe.But that is about all that can be said in mitigation. On the debit side, Mr Duncan Smith lacks the qualities required to lead a great political party. He appears stiff and out of touch with ordinary voters. He is slow-witted in the House of Commons, leaden in front of the television cameras and an irredeemably poor platform speaker. He has also demonstrated a fatal lack of inter-personal skills. Tory MPs owe it to their party and their country to find a better alternative and to do so quickly.(Excerpted from a leader in the October 25 issue of ‘The Economist’)
