LETTERS The Tebbit factor
Sir: Lord Tebbit shows his distressing loss of touch with mainstream Conservatism (`Tories, don't cool down', 11 October) by interpreting my view that the Tories must warmly embrace the ethnic and sexual minorities as necessarily evident of my more general political `wetness'. More extensive research than his genealogical preoccupations seem to have allowed might have revealed to him my previously expressed reservations on EMU and four years' service in local government where, as finance chairman, I privatised half my council's services and set the lowest council tax in the United Kingdom. Recent confer- ence statements by rather more distin- guished younger Tories like Michael Por- tillo suggest I am not perhaps unique in finding social tolerance a happy, indeed necessary, bedfellow of economic rigour.
I trust, therefore, that Lord Tebbit will enjoy his well-earned retirement in the comforting knowledge that the Conserva- tive economic legacy of the last 18 years, to which he made such a distinctive contribu- tion, will be safe with a new generation of Tories, even if the social one in its entirety is not.
Simon Brocklebank-Fowler
10/12 Moreton Terrace Mews North, London SW1
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