Perhaps too she was displeased that Mr al-Rehaief has already published his own book Because Each Life Is Precious – what

Perhaps, too, she was displeased that Mr al-Rehaief has already published his own book, Because Each Life Is Precious – what is it with these people and their book titles? – but in any case, he was comprehensively snubbed.That was the main thrust of the story as reported, but I think the subsequent events are rather more telling. This is the Conservative Party, after all.simoncarr75 hotmail
More from Simon Carr. There’s something terribly emblematic about the disastrous trip Mr Mohammed al-Rehaief made recently to West Virginia in America. Mr al-Rehaief is a brave Iraqi lawyer, who during the recent war found out that an American private soldier, Jessica Lynch, was lying in an Iraqi hospital in Nasiriyah. At considerable risk to himself, he made his way towards the American forces and told them this; quite why he did this is not clear, since it seems unlikely that Private Lynch was in any personal danger.
However, thanks to Mr al-Rehaief’s information, American forces raided the hospital and rescued their soldier. If he hadn’t been rude to Boris Johnson in the last leadership, Boris might have voted for him and Mr Thing would never have got into the final two.And finally, the question was: “But what if he wins, Nicholas?”"In that case,” Mr Soames declared magnificently, “we’d be completely fouquet in Le Touquet.”That may yet be the case. He favoured me with a cut direct (“And now you are a man,” my colleague said) All this is Portillo’s fault anyway.

Would Howard stitch up a deal with Davis? Would Ancram run? What about Ken? Would IDS hang on with a majority of one?This lot was saying it was too close to call, that lot was saying he was about to be humiliated, and the other lot (the largest) was saying they hadn’t a clue.Michael Portillo’s lips sailed past at head height, like a rubber deck quoit. “It was long, boring, rambling incoherent mess.”After the pitch and out in the corridor, nobody knew what was going on. Best foot forward.He went up the steps into the 1922 room and the door shut behind him The drumming on the tables started. “Don’t worry,” a shadow cabinet minister reassured his neighbour. “They’re just saying goodbye.”The speech lasted half an hour. What was the best line in it? “It wasn’t that sort of speech,” his supporter Bernard Jenkin said “There wasn’t a best line,” an opponent said.

He walked his long mile down the corridor in the same spirit Grace under pressure Chin up Head down. On the front bench before lunch he’d seemed as calm and as good-humoured as if he’d been on the quarterdeck of a man o’ war at Trafalgar. The chattering, the cackling, the stupid jokes, the gossip, the speculating, the muttering, the whispering, the plotting, the post-plotting suddenly hushed. We all went quiet and a gangway opened up in the middle of the corridor.The leader of the Conservative Party had emerged from a door and stepped into the corridor He started a long walk into the silence Everyone stared at him He smiled back, left and right People just stared. “You need your hearing checked,” Peter Luff told me forcefully Something about a proxy Andrew Murrison had given him I blame modernisation.Then it all stilled. It’s that time of year again when the journalists gather in the House of Commons committee corridor to witness the sacrifice of the leader, in an ancient ritual that is said to lead (no one knows why) to the rebirth of the Conservative Party.
A hundred journalists, many of them larger than government targets would like them to be, milled in the middle of the corridor.Some MP muttered to the teller (boastfully, it seemed to me) that he’d got Andrew Murrison’s popsy No, no, I’d misheard The fact was that Andrew Murrison was poxy Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t vote himself. It is a dangerous assumption for any Conservative supporter to make but it may be that the party’s leadership travail will be brought to an earlier and more benign conclusion than had seemed possible
More from Bruce Anderson.

The hope is that all the other candidates might somehow be persuaded to stand aside for Mr Howard, enabling the party to elect its new leader by the end of next week. One can see why the idea is attractive; and the wholly unexpected decision of David Davis to refuse to contest the leadership makes it a serious possibility.Mr Howard has a commanding lead among Tory MPs and, with Mr Davis’s withdrawal, there is no alternative candidate who could give him a serious challenge in the country. It is not a bad strategy, and it certainly plays to both men’s strengths.A number of Tory MPs would like to go further They are not only seeking a dream ticket but a coronation. While Mr Howard proved to be a formidable practitioner of the old politics and cheered up the Tory core vote by relentless assaults on Labour, Mr Letwin could reach out to the young and to those who have lost faith in politics. He has been known to praise his political opponents and he has the disconcerting habit of just saying what he thinks without calculating the political consequences. He is serially honest.Yet in current circumstances, that could be a most effective political tactic; not that he does it for tactical reasons.