IT WAS Douglas Hurd who once remarked of Ken Clarke that he was “the sort of politician who would cross the road in order to get into a fight” — and on that basis alone his TV interview with Jonathan Dimbleby should have come as no surprise to anyone. Plainly, if he feels he has half a chance, he will not be able to keep out of the latest scrap for the Tory leadership, even though it will represent the third occasion on which he has plunged into such a battle.
My own view is that it is unlikely to prove a case of “third time lucky” — too many of Clarke’s former supporters (such as Ian Taylor, Damian Greene, John Maples, Tim Yeo and Boris Johnson) have already drifted away to other candidates for there to be much hope of his prevailing.
“The thinking man’s lager lout” — to borrow another phrase once coined about him — has also over the past eight years displayed too much truculence for his own good. Not to give a damn about what your colleagues think of you may in many ways amount to an admirable quality, but the career of the former Chancellor’s near namesake, Alan Clark, served to demonstrate that in a predominantly goody-two-shoes House of Commons, it will always carry its perils along with it.
Nor, I fancy, can Clarke hope to demolish the age argument (he’ll be 65 in a fortnight) by asserting that “any politician is as young as he feels”. (The last time I remember hearing that always plaintive cry was when an old Labour stalwart friend of mine, Arthur Bottomley, failed to secure a by-election nomination back in 1962 — and he was only 56). In Clarke’s case it is not just a question of anno domini, either. There is also the question of the sheer longevity of his political career. He must be the only surviving Tory MP actually to have served in Ted Heath’s Government more than 30 years ago, as a government whip from 1972 to 1974.
Even the proud record of the ministerial offices he has held — Health, Education, the Home Office, the Chancellorship — can cut both ways. Of course, it looks and sounds impressive but, as Malcolm Rifkind is also likely to discover, it operates as a reminder of the past rather than as a promise for the future. One of David Davis’s assets is that he was lucky enough to hold only two ministerial offices, neither of them high-level, in the Major Government.
Of course, David Cameron, elected only in 2001, never held any ministerial job and, in theory, any competition between the 38-year-old MP for Witney and Clarke, the old, experienced bruiser, ought to be regarded as “no contest”. But, if things work out that way, it will be a genuine cause for astonishment. Cameron, whether through the manipulative activities of the Notting Hill mafia or not, has already secured enough quality public support from the Centre and Left of the party almost to doom any Clarke candidature before it starts.
None of which, however, is to deny that the most formidable debater on the Tory benches in the Commons still has it within his power to “make the weather”. Always provided that the absurd Constitutional Convention, to be held at the end of September, agrees to withdraw any specific role from the constituencies in the choice of leader — and that, I’d have said, is by no means certain — a leadership election could be safely over by November. But in what spirit it is fought and what kind of scars it leaves behind is largely up to Clarke — and for a very simple reason.
One factor that the Tory party can never seem to get into its head is that each time it rejects easily its most popular figure, it is perceived as cutting off its nose to spite its face. One might have hoped that, after doing it twice, it would have learnt the lesson. But there is little sign of anything like that happening. If Clarke does eventually throw his large hat into the ring, only to see it trampled over by a crowd of nonentities, then the Conservatives will have only themselves to blame for the consequences that are bound to follow in terms of popular alienation.
To claim that the outcome of the next general election will be determined in the course of a few months is, no doubt, to exaggerate. But it is still easy to envisage a scenario in which 197 Conservative MPs combine to commit hari-kiri. All it will require is for the opinion polls to show that Clarke remains the public’s preferred candidate to take over from Michael Howard and then for a majority of Tory MPs to persist in a course of impious stubbornness by disregarding such advice. In so doing, they are bound to confirm the popular suspicion that they are keener to build an inward-looking tabernacle than to form an outgoing political party, and for that they will eventually pay an electoral price.
Lost Labour’s luvvies
AT THE gathering last week to launch Mark Stuart’s official life of the last Labour leader, John Smith, just one current member of the Blair Government turned up. Hats off to Hilary Armstrong, now Blair’s Chief Whip, but before that, between 1992 and 1994, Smith’s PPS as Leader of the Opposition. But where were all the other former beneficiaries of Smith’s patronage and favour? Cabinet ministers are notoriously busy, bustling people, but in politics there ought to be some days of obligation, just as there are in religion. For my money, last Monday should have been one of them. If Michael Foot, Derry Irvine and George Robertson could all make it, why on earth couldn’t John Prescott, Gordon Brown, even Jack Straw? After all, there was a time when each of them was proud to sit in Smith’s Shadow Cabinet.
Diplomatic diddling
GOOD TO SEE Patrick Wright’s spirited defence of the expertise of the Diplomatic Service in The Guardian last Friday. What had clearly provoked his wrath was the twin appointments of a couple of not very distinguished Labour former ministers, Helen Liddell and Paul Boateng, to be, respectively, British High Commissioners in Canberra and Cape Town. The former head of the Diplomatic Service made a sound trade-union point, but I wonder if he would apply it equally to appointees from the Home Civil Service. One of Liddell’s predecessors in Australia, Alex Allan, had no diplomatic experience when he was appointed to Canberra in 1997 (he is now permanent under-secretary at the Lord Chancellor’s department). If there’s that sort of give and take among civil servants in Whitehall, why shouldn’t the same rules apply as between FO mandarins and ministers?
Luckless Archbishop
POOR Rowan Williams seems to have very little luck. Lambeth Palace went to some trouble last week to lay on an “outreach” lecture for him on the media — and all it got for its pains was vulgar abuse in The Sun and (perhaps even more hurtful) a “complete ignoral” in the middle-market Daily Express. The trouble is, though, that the Archbishop of Canterbury brings at least some of his troubles on his own head. His is always so carefully balanced an academic approach that it hardly lends itself to newspaper headlines. Once John Sentamu gets into his forthright stride at York, I tremble a little for his colleague at Canterbury’s future.
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