From Geoffrey Harrison Sir: Bigger questions now face the Tory
party than how to fight the next general election or who should succeed IDS. Where a generation ago ideologues argued over the need for a realignment of the Left, now is the moment for Conservatives to debate the need for a realignment of the Right. Recent front-bench moves by the Lib Dems indicate a shift towards traditional Conservative thinking.
Conservatives with real courage should now be asking how to detach the Lib Dems from their left wing, who would be happier in alliance with Labour in any event, and align them with progressive Conservatives.
In the 1950s and 1960s. the Conservative party kept the Liberal party from extinction by leaving them a free run in some northern constituencies, and they bumbled along with six MPs where they otherwise would have been cut to two and eliminated from British party politics.
It is now the turn of the true Manchester Liberal wing of the Lib Dems to save the Conservative party. Are there any Tory MPs with the wit, intelligence, sense of history and foresight to realise this?
Geoffrey Harrison
Farnham, Surrey
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