What A Pickle

Eric Pickles' Election Review 2017 contains 126 recommendations but nowhere, at least in my quick scan this morning, is there a succinct statement of why we did not win.  It seems the 126 recommendations are designed to obscure the bitter truth that we did not have the policies and qualities of leadership necessary to appeal to the sections of the electorate we needed to win over.  There is a crumb of comfort in recommendation #2 - "so far as practical the Parliamentary and Voluntary Party, through Conservative Party Forum (my italics) should have an opportunity to make suggestions for inclusion in the Manifesto."  I would have gone further and recommended that Conservative Party Forum should have been able to veto items proposed for inclusion in the Manifesto!