With the Conservative Party licking its wounds over Oldham, it hasn’t been a great day for party co-chairman Baroness Warsi. In a prickly interview on the Today programme she levelled some pretty sharp accusations at the ‘right-wing’ of the party. It’s no good complaining about the campaign’s lack of vigour if you didn’t go up and campaign yourself, she said. Not an unreasonable comment. What was careless was to attribute this so specifically to a particular group. Of course, everyone knows that there is a vocal group of right-wing Conservatives who are deeply suspicious of the Coalition. That many of them might also be quick to leap into criticism of the party’s by-election efforts is only to be expected. But it would have been cannier of Warsi not to leap so crudely into the fray. As it is, she has given some useful ammunition to those opponents of Mr. Cameron who would like to see him gradually denuded of modernising supporters in top positions. She would have been wise to exercise more restraint.
The reaction to her comments has meanwhile been concerted and over the top. Top prize probably goes to the Spectator’s James Forsyth, who wrote of ‘fury that the party chairman is attacking a section of the party.’ Honestly. She’s truly disgraceful. It’s almost like writing off an entire group of slightly different party thinkers as, say, ‘wets’.
