Purging Toryism of its excuses

One always thinks of Hakluyt when

the party of hereditary privilege,

anywhere in the English-speaking

world, throws its literate elements

to the maw of nativist cannibalism.

There's a nasty stink of inorganic

impostorship in these impertinences,

phony Conservatism purging virtues

of the soil from which it arose. The

Times publishes a fine report today,

on the compulsory schism which Brit-

win's Prime Minister is imposing on

his Party, culminating in expelling

one of his country's ornaments of a

distinctly British tradition, the

investigative discovery of the world.

He might as well have told Francis

Drake not to go sailing, or Patrick

Leigh Fermor not to go out walking;

so he jettisoned Rory Stewart, than

whom no one holds a more permanent

claim on travel literature's shelf.

Britain has only begun to be sorry,

for a gruesome imitation of America.