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 ____ 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