This is totally disgraceful journalism. The reporter, Baldwin, has been penning rabidly pro-EU articles for The Times for as long as I have been reporting on the scene and probably much longer than that.
This here is a ‘manufactured’ article in that it purports to masquerade as a quasi-interview with that ‘man of yesterday’ - Heseltine. In practice it seems one phone call seems to be whole basis of the interview ‘element’ and the rest of the article consists of Baldwin’s own views.
The man has always been a nasty piece of work turning his news-items into quasi-opinion pieces as if from a columnist.
I know that for some readers Heseltine is a dangerous bogeyman. He no longer has influence though he certainly holds his old views. But he refused to give a quote for this article.
The Editor would be well advised to suggest to this man that he might find life more congenial at The Mirror or The Guardian.
Christina
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THE TIMES 27.10.09
Cameron will have to ditch European rightwingers, Heseltine predicts [No he doesn’t - see article]
David Cameron would be forced into a swift and humiliating retreat on Europe if he wins power, according to one of the elder statesmen from the last Conservative Government.
Lord Heseltine, the former Deputy Prime Minister, predicts that Mr Cameron will have to rejoin the European People’s Party (EPP) soon after the election. He is understood [that’s a weasel word for ‘I’ve made it up! -cs] to have warned the party leadership at a private meeting last week that its currently Eurosceptic stance would be deeply damaging to Britain’s foreign policy interests. He suggested [who says he did? Source? -cs] that the Conservative leader would inevitably have to “reach an accommodation” with the EPP — even though that would be extremely difficult to achieve without losing face and enraging party activists.
Earlier this year the party fulfilled a pledge made during Mr Cameron’s campaign for the leadership by severing ties with the mainstream, but federalist, EPP in the European Parliament. Instead, he has formed a new alliance with mainly east European rightwingers, who have been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism and extremism. They include Michal Kaminski, of Poland’s Law and Justice party, and Robert Zile, of the Latvian party For Fatherland and Freedom. [The only people who have made these near libellous and untrue accusations are the Labour party and the Guardian. They have been completely disproved -cs]
This has alienated important allies in Europe, such as Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and President Sarkozy of France.[Since when have Sarfkozy and Merkel been allies. They are, even now engaged in a campaign to wrest the leadership of finance in Europe from London to benefit Paris and Frankfurt. Indeed Merkel’s finance minister “declared economic war “ (his words) on London -cs] Berlin and Paris have been dismayed further by Conservative opposition to the Lisbon treaty, as well as signals from Mr Cameron that he would still seek to repatriate powers from existing agreements even if the treaty were ratified before the election.
As The Times disclosed last week, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has also expressed alarm that a rupture in relations between a future Tory government and Europe would diminish Britain’s ability to wield influence in world affairs. [This was flatly denied by Hague as pure invention -cs]
Lord Heseltine, contacted last night, [The reporter was thus stiirring things up to fit an article he’d already drafted and thought Heseltine would be good for a quote- cs] did not deny suggesting that his party had got itself into a “sticky situation” on Europe. He said his comments last week had been intended as private, adding: “My views are well known but you won’t get a quote out of me that might damage my party.” [So even that phone call has proved a dodgy source! -cs]
Having resigned from the Thatcher Cabinet in 1986 during the Westland crisis — which revolved around his preference for the helicopter company to be integrated with French and Italian defence manufacturers — Lord Heseltine knows how incendiary the issue of Europe can be for Conservative governments. For more than a decade afterwards, in and out of office, he was at the fulcrum of a battle against Euroscepticism that caused carnage within the party. [Yes he caused it! -cs]
[From here on even Baldwin doesn’t pretend that that the article is anything else but his, Baldwin’s, views with a quote from the boy Miliband, trying to be Brown’s successor. After that he dredges other papers for the odd anti-Tory news item all completely irrelevant to the rest of the article -cs]
Kenneth Clarke, one of his allies in that fight, was brought back into Mr Cameron’s top team to lend it greater weight and experience. The Shadow Business Secretary accepts that party policy on Europe is settled and has been told that the only way he could campaign for a “yes” vote in a referendum on the treaty would be to resign.
David Miliband sought to capitalise on fresh tension among the Conservatives over Europe by declaring that any government pursuing a foreign policy “lost in hubris, nostalgia or xenophobia” would have to “watch our influence in the world wane”. The Foreign Secretary said that Tory plans to repatriate powers were based on a deception that “you can hate Europe as it exists today and remain central to European policymaking”.
•A woman Tory candidate faces the threat of deselection today in the latest sign of a growing grassroots’ backlash against Mr Cameron’s efforts to make his party select more women.
Elizabeth Truss was picked to fight the safe Tory seat of Norfolk South West by local Conservatives on Saturday. But the 34-year-old has been summoned to an emergency meeting to answer criticism that she failed to disclose an 18-month affair with a Conservative MP, Mark Field.
Meanwhile, a Tory MP under fire over expenses claims survived a vote of no confidence last night, party supporters said. Eleanor Laing, the Shadow Justice Minister and MP for Epping Forest, received the overwhelming backing at a meeting of her constituency association, sources said.
What a horrid man and a disgraceful journalist!
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