Posts Tagged ‘Bath’
Lord King of Bridgewater
On Friday March 26 North East Somerset Conservative Party members attended what will probably be their last social gathering before the General Election – a dinner held in Farmborough Village Hall. Guest of honour was Lord King of Bridgewater formerly Secretary of State for Defence and for Northern Ireland – perhaps better known as Tom King. In a witty speech, he reminded the audience that politics was in many ways like practising to play a piece of music; it was necessary to keep on doing it till it was right and perfect. The Labour Party was now in a very different proposition from when Tony Blair was elected in 1997. Blairism in his view was now dead, and the present Labour Party had now almost given up. In areas such as defence, where there had been numerous defence ministers, none of whom had any previous background or experience in defence matters, he regarded it as scandalous that long delayed defence orders for new ships, helicopters and tanks were now being placed by the Labour Government in its dying days instead of when the troops had needed them years ago. Voters in the forthcoming election should exercise their right to vote – and vote Conservative.
The above was a Press Release we sent out a few days ago.
I’m very glad to have had the good fortune to welcome Lord King of Bridgewater to North East Somerset. As the communiqué mentions, this was our last social gathering before my election and thus probably the only visit we will have from a fellow Tory Grandee. I had hoped that Mr Cameron or Mr Osborne or anyone quite frankly would make the journey out here, but I’m still waiting to hear back. Ho Hum.
On the other hand, Lord King has always been more than willing to visit Somerset. In November I read that he visited the Bath Conservative Future Society (sadly I was not invited and only discovered the event after it had taken place.)
In fact, Lord King was the only Tory to come and visit my predecessor, Mark Prisk, in 1997. Though I was campaigning as a candidate in Fife at the time.