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Leading article

The only way the Tories can show they care about the North is to permit fracking in Sussex

3 August 2013

9:00 AM

3 August 2013

9:00 AM

David Howell never really succeeded as energy and then transport secretary in Mrs Thatcher’s governments. After she sacked him in 1983, Thatcher wrote that ‘he lacked the mixture of creative political imagination and practical drive to be a first-class cabinet minister’.

If she were still alive and writing now, she might have added that he has the sensibilities of a rhinoceros on Valium.

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