Here’s the sentimental Matthew Parris on the unsentimental Michael Howard:

“The Conservative Party has come back out of the dark. Perhaps we should be grateful that a man that the media has called a creature of the night was entrusted with the task of guiding it through the shadows and into the light. Michael Howard’s success in this election campaign was limited and his reward in the coinage of percentages and seats was modest, yet what Mr Howard has done will earn him an everlasting place on the Conservative roll of honour: he has turned a decade-long retreat into the beginnings of an advance. He has turned the Tory project round…Lord, how I admire the unsloppiness, the unsentimentality, the starchiness, the understatement of this man. Among the moist eyes, quivering lips and posturing vacuities of the politics of recent years, Mr Howard stands out like a sliver of flint in a melting jelly. Think of the melodrama we shall have to endure when the present Prime Minister finally decides to hang up his powder-puff, think of the vapours and the hysterics — and blow the parchment-dry Mr Howard a silent kiss.”

Indeed.