A flight to competence
By getting rid of Iain Duncan Smith, the Tories have given themselves a chance
WHAT finished Iain Duncan Smith was not that his party was doing worse than anyone thought possible under his leadership, but that for the first time in years there was a glimmer of hope. It was Catch-22 for the Tory leader. The more convincingly upbeat his depiction of the party's prospects, the more he put the idea into the heads of his MPs that they would probably do even better without him.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “A flight to competence”
From the November 1st 2003 edition
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