Until a few years ago, if anyone had predicted a nervous breakdown for the Tory party, it would have looked something like the scene in Brief Encounter in which an unhappy Celia Johnson rushes out of the station buffet to the edge of the platform just before the London express is scheduled to race past. For a few moments she hesitates-an emotional maelstrom in a fetching hat-then the express hurtles by and resolves the crisis for her. She returns to collect her packages and to take the local train home to her children and decent stick of a husband. Only the Rachmaninov soundtrack reminds us of the Freudian truth that, like all civilisation, home counties decency is founded on repression.
Emotional repression is rather out of style in today’s Tory party. Compare Celia Johnson’s anguish with this excerpt from Simon Walters’s account of the Hague years Tory Wars: Conservatives in Crisis.
“One week after the reshuffle in February 2000, Maude and Portillo went to see the leader and threatened to resign unless he sacked the three aides [Sebastian Coe, Amanda Platell and Nick Wood] upon whom Hague relied more than anyone else.
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