Final Rounds
It was a weird ending: five Tory heavyweights standing on a television game show set, an audience of fans laughing, clapping and cheering, a "Labour Witch" complete with a broom and black hat who roused party leader William Hague to a rowdy rant about Labour's unkept promises. It was Hague's final campaign speech for an election he's doomed to lose. But will he lose his job as party boss, too? "That's not an issue now," says Francis Maude, a senior conservative parliamentarian. "We're focused on the election fight."
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When approached by TIME, Hague refused to discuss his post-election plans. "I've got to make the final rounds," he said, boarding a burgundy Vauxhall sedan, avoiding a trio of protestors masked as John Major, Margaret Thatcher and "Marionette" Hague. During his final campaign pitch, he had warned that a Labour victory would destroy British sovereignty. The voters "know the stakes are too high to risk another term of Labour Government," he said. "They know that above all because of Mr. Blair's plan to scrap the pound and surrender to Brussels. This could be the last general election in Britain when we can still run our own affairs in this country."
Maude, shadow Chancellor Michael Portillo, shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe and party chairman Michael Ancram made separate speeches, each standing on separate round platforms, as if castaways stranded on a cluster of outcroppings. Maude spoke of the need for "British internationalism;" Portillo talked of "compassionate" conservatism; Ancram warned of the "creeping growth of nationalism;" and Widdecombe spoke, somewhat incongruously, of why she "changed Church, but never the party." As one Tory media advisor put it, the line-up reflected "the four diverse faces of the party, united in its sense of purpose and mission." How long that unity lasts may depend on how badly the Tories lose.
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