The Conservative Party’s morbid symptoms
Alan Clark’s final set of diaries provide a guide to the party’s ailing state
Alan Clark knew he was dying. The Tory politician and diarist was “completely desexualated”—a disturbing condition for a philanderer—and whiled away the afternoons “listlessly plucking at Hello or an Audi catalogue”. Eye-blurring headaches had bugged him for years, but he ignored the optician’s injunction to have them checked out until a sudden hospitalisation in May 1999 uncovered a vast tumour lodged in the whirring brain of the MP for Kensington and Chelsea. Four months later, he would be dead.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Bucket-list Tories”
Britain February 11th 2023
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