THE ONE TIME I met Tony Blair was in the Express Newspapers office. He came in for lunch with Lord Hollick, the proprietor and Labour peer, Rosie Boycott, the editor, and a few writers. The Express was a desperately loyal Blairite puppy dog and Rosie opened up by asking the Prime Minister what we could do to help.

I remember he was agitated about Ken Livingstone, who was odds-on favourite for London Mayor and, as an independent, a huge source of embarrassment to the Government. Blair painted Livingstone as a harmful egomaniac, impossible to work with and a complete control freak. He won by a landside. The next time he stood he was, go figure, a Labour Party member again. Rosie, bless her, had resigned.

It turns out the help is not as important as the person giving it. Blair’s Labour did not need the earnest Rosie the way it needed the insufferable Ken. Imagine you are drowning and two figures are standing on the quay. One is Heinrich Himmler, the other Mother Teresa. Which do you pick to save you? Easy: the one with the lifebelt.

Ken Clarke probably does not like swimming: his cigar would go out. Yet the populist in Blair undoubtedly fears him the way, despite his disdain, he felt sufficiently troubled by Livingstone to welcome him back to the fold. Not for the first time, he has shown the Conservative Party the way. Behind the scenes senior Tories offer dark warnings about their bothersome Ken. Harmful egomaniac, apparently. Impossible to work with. Complete control freak. The difference is, where Blair, in time, had the sense to acknowledge Livingstone’s strengths and therefore his worth — the people of London loved him, for some inexplicable reason — the Conservative Party cannot move beyond score-settling issues from a decade ago. They see opinion polls running foursquare in Clarke’s favour and think they know better.

“David Davis as Tory leader” read a letter in Monday’s Times. Richard Bacon was the first signatory. Interesting, I thought. The bloke from Blue Peter, I wonder what he’s got to do with it. Turns out Richard Bacon is the MP for Norfolk South, and has probably never seen a roll of sticky-back plastic. There were five names below his, none of which could be distinguished from the staff list at a regional branch of the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society. And these are the men who would cast Clarke aside in favour of another creature that time (and everybody else) forgot. Perhaps the Tory brains trust should cut to the chase and sub-title the next manifesto “Wilderness, Ho!”

In these pages last week, Alastair Campbell did a fine job of feigning indifference to Clarke as Conservative leader. “At the risk of fuelling the belief that he is the man Labour fears, Clarke is the one Labour should most relish getting stuck into,” he said. Ah, the old double-bluff. He knows we do not believe him, so he admits he knows we do not believe him, and therefore, we believe him. See what he did? Genius. The day he went into politics, “find the lady” lost potentially its greatest star.

Here is the alternative view: if Ken Clarke led the Conservative Party, Tony Blair would be gone within a year. If the Conservative Party could take direct aim at his Achilles heel every week during Question Time, if it could consistently link this Government and most specifically its leader to panic, despair, casualties and chaos, then the modern, ruthless organisation that Blair helped to create would have no option but to remove him from the firing line before too much damage were done.

It’s the war, stupid. Always the war. Only the war. Whoever leads Her Majesty’s Opposition has got to be in a position to take Blair — and later Gordon Brown, who also supported it — directly to task over the greatest strategic mistake of any British prime minister since the Second World War. Now that Iraq is destined for a horrific civil conflict and the repercussions of British involvement are having a terrifying, direct impact on our lives, the only way Blair can stay safe is if the Conservatives elect a leader who stays silent on the daily litany of death, fear, corruption and destabilisation that is the harvest of our invasion. Someone who supported it. Like David Cameron or David Davis. Not Clarke.

Viewed coldly, political point-scoring on the subject of postwar Iraq is so undemanding it has even made a sage of George Galloway. Only one qualification is needed: the critic had to foresee the cataclysm. Clarke did, which is why he continues to represent Blair’s worst nightmare: a centre voice, appealing to many of the same voters, with a man of the people image (however unfounded) and the ability to lay the blame for daily catastrophe directly at his feet. On election night, Galloway’s speech, emotive, zealous, angry, grandstanding, stole the show and the news bulletins the following morning. Imagine that happening every day for a year. And how could the Government respond? By pointing out some inconsistencies of thought over Europe? Get real.

It is very hard for any Conservative to go head to head with Blair right now. The Labour Party is still seen as the defender of the health service, the welfare state and public education, and any attacks based on social issues are rebuffed with details about government policy from another age. The Conservatives’ traditional stronghold, the economy, is healthy, while Labour has so successfully aped right-wing statements on law and order that any attempt to open debate in that area is redundant. Where Blair is vulnerable is foreign policy and its fallout. The deceptions, the folly, the vanity, the casualties, the cost, the false hopes, the miscalculations, the increased danger. When every dawn brings bad news, the attack is simply sustained; the fear that it will split the party groundless. Were Blair to reply to these very real charges by gesturing to the Conservative backbenches and pointing out that, at the time, most agreed with him, not Clarke, it would only make the Opposition leader sound wiser.

The fact that most Tories supported the Government says it all. This time, give the job to the organ grinder.