Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

The resignation of Timothy Kirkhope, the Conservative MEPs’ leader in the European Parliament, has thrown the Tories into a state of flux. Mr Kirkhope said he was standing down after five years in the job to spend more time developing the Tories’ right-wing group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, known in Brussels as the Addams Family because of its motley collection of parties. One Tory wag muttered: “It’s like a weird echo of John Nott’s resignation, when he said he wanted to spend more time with his family, except in Timothy’s case it’s the Addams Family.” The Tories’ position in the parliament gets loss coherent every day. The latest damning development sees the new Latvian government refuse to go into coalition with the Conservatives’ Latvian allies, the For Fatherland and Freedom Party, because of their extreme right views. The new Latvian leadership said “having the nationalists in government would raise ethnic tensions and harm Latvia’s image abroad.” Something about which the Conservatives are not concerned. Who will replace Mr Kirkhope? Perm one of these six: Richard Ashworth, the Daily Telegraph’s blogger Daniel Hannan, compromise candidate Struan Stevenson, Geoffrey Van Orden (Vin Ordinaire to his critics), the aptly surnamed Nirj Diva or Mr Bean’s politically dyspraxic cousin Martin Callanan.  What an embarrassment of riches. Well, an embarrassment, anyway.