THE TIMES
SATURDAY JUNE 09 2001

What's long in the tooth, irrelevant and extinct?

BEN MACINTYRE

The Tories would do well to remember the chilling tale of the woolly mammoth

Yesterday The Times offered a fascinating, in-depth account of the way two
different species of lumbering ancient creatures can dramatically be wiped off
the map: the woolly mammoths and, 10,000 years later, the Tories.

Many factors conspired against Mammuthus, including climate change, reduced
feeding grounds and possibly a meteorological calamity; but most importantly
man, who apparently so enjoyed the taste of roast mammoth that he ate them all.
The new theory has added fuel to an ancient debate: was it a changing
environment that spelled doom for the hirsute mammals, or the arrival of a
superior beast, a carnivore armed with a larger brain and sophisticated
weapons?

As they survey the scattered skeleton of their party, Tories are asking
themselves the same question. Did they simply lose out in the competition
between different species, or has something dramatic shifted in the political
climate, making Tory survival dependant upon rapid and radical evolution?

Full text:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,636-2001194248,00.html

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Independent
David Aaronovitch: The days of spin are over; an era of anti-spin has arrived
'This is a Britain where the centre-left knows it has won the argument but
knows it needs to win the practice'
09 June 2001

Nothing has changed; everything is different. Same PM, same Chancellor, same
majority, same gene pool out of which to extract ministers, same old Tories
faced with electing a new leader. But look ahead and a quite different
political landscape stretches before us. This is now a Britain in which the
centre-left can have confidence that it has won the arguments but knows that it
needs to win the practice. And by the centre-left I mean the Labour and Liberal
Democrat parties

Full text:
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=77025