THE STRANGE DEATH OF CONSERVATIVE ENGLAND:

Howard hopes tax pledge will lift gloom (Nicholas Watt and Michael White, October 4, 2004, The Guardian)

Michael Howard will today attempt to breathe new life into a despondent Conservative party by turning the clock back to the glory days of the 1980s with a pledge to match Margaret Thatcher's tax cutting commitments.

As gloomy Tories gathered in Bournemouth for their last conference before the general election, the scale of the challenge facing Mr Howard was underlined by a poll which showed that he is even less popular than Iain Duncan Smith.

The findings of the Populus poll could not have come at a worse time for Mr Howard as he struggles to convince voters that he is a credible alternative to Tony Blair after a series of blows. The latest came last Thursday when the Tories were beaten into fourth place by the UK Independence party in the Hartlepool byelection.

The Conservative leadership will try to show that it will not be blown off course by such setbacks when Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, sets out a series of steps leading to tax cuts. Haunted by memories of the 2001 general election, when his incautious talk of £20bn tax cuts was pounced on by Labour, Mr Letwin will not offer specific commitments.

But Liam Fox, the Tory co-chairman, did his best to show the Tories are serious about tax cuts when he declared that the party's plans were modelled on Lady Thatcher's commitments in the 1979 election campaign. "Mrs Thatcher didn't go into that election with any specific pledges on how much she'd reduce tax by. But there was a very clear direction that the government intended to reduce tax..." he said.

How these clowns can watch the success of UKIP and not figure out that Lady Thatcher was right about Europe too simply defies imagination.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 3, 2004 11:33 PM