O Tempora Slips of the pen, to use an old-fashioned
euphemism, are invariably more revealing than the texts of which they form a part. Monday's
Times provided a perfect example of this. In two different places, on the bill page and on the home
news page, the paper's political correspondent quoted Angus Maude as having written in the SPECTATOR that the Conservative party had 'com- pletely lost effective political leadership.'
Of course he didn't write that at all. What he said was that the party had 'completely lost effec- tive political initiative' (my italics). But for the past three years the bulk of the press has been so obsessed with the question of the leadership that it has become incapable of discussing the Tory party or politics in general in any other terms. It's about time it grew up. Perhaps The Times might set an example by starting to read what is actually written.
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