Liam Fox and the smell of political death
A couple of Tory MPs I met this morning seem to think that even if Liam Fox survives today he’ll be hard-pressed to survive the week.
One suggested that Dr Fox’s friend seems to have been “making a living” out of his connections with Dr Fox, but there is no firm evidence in the public domain to support that assertion. They also point out that Dr Fox can only try to draw a line so many times. His last attempt has, of course, already crumbled with Sunday’s on-screen apology.
One big question for Liam Fox is how much David Cameron’s support for him is political theatre – a PM must look like he isn’t trying to finish off a political rival just as he must look like he is especially firm on political allies (hence, Tony Blair’s tough treatment of Peter Mandelson’s second resignayion – over the Hindujas). Tips for a successor seem to be gathering around Andrew Mitchell. His place, one MP suggested, could be taken by Baroness Warsi, freeing up the Chairmanship of the party for someone else.
Read more: Fox to face grilling from MPs
Liam Fox has some experience smelling political death. Back in the Major years a senior government whip, mindful of the government’s dwindling majority asked Dr Fox to cast his medical eye over the Tory benches and work out who were the “walking by-elections.”
Dr Fox looked for signs of all kinds of ailments, studied MPs’ skin colouring and gait, eventually reporting back with a list of those Tories unlikely to see out the parliament. He once claimed that his prognosis was nearly bang on the money. But he held back one name from the list he’d compiled – the whip who’d commissioned the list, David Lightbown, whose death in 1995 triggered a by-election loss to Labour on a 22 per cent swing.
Read more: Liam Fox, Sri Lanka, and a friend called Werritty
Latest I’m hearing is that we see the Brennan interim report before noon and it talks of appearances not being good – so Dr Fox’s apology last night was an attempt to pre-empt that and Downing Street it seems doesn’t see that report as fatal.
But there’s a fuller report still to come from Brennan and maybe therell be another inquiry commissioned before day is over.
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