IS THE Conservative Party sleep-walking into a Ken Clarke leadership? Under the existing rules for electing a Tory chief — in which all 300,000 party members have the final say — a militant and unrepentant Europhile like Mr Clarke stands no chance. This was shown in 2001 when even Iain Duncan Smith was easily able to defeat him.

But, thanks to the draft changes to the Tory constitution unveiled yesterday by Michael Howard, the heftiest of “big beasts” once again becomes a serious contender. The proposed revisions will deprive ordinary members of any direct say in the leadership race. Significantly, this is the section of the reform package which caused least controversy at Tuesday night’s fractious meeting of the 1922 Committee and the peers.

Yet the former Chancellor’s support is still underrated by many — not least by some prominent figures in the camp of the front-runner, David Davis. Despite his outspoken Europhilia, in 2001 Mr Clarke managed to mobilise an enthusiastic minority of MPs (59 out of 166) and 39 per cent of the grassroots behind him. If he retains anything approaching these levels of support, he will again be in the final round of the contest, however the new system is structured.

Mr Clarke’s support will further be strengthened if there is a “no” vote in the French referendum on the EU constitution: some lesser intellects on the Right believe, erroneously, that such an outcome will diminish the toxicity of the European issue. One very senior supporter of Iain Duncan Smith in the 2001 leadership contest is looking afresh at Clarke — on precisely these grounds.

So what is Michael Howard’s motive in changing the rules? He certainly isn’t seeking to benefit Ken, his old Cambridge Union rival. The very reverse — as was shown by Mr Howard’s remark, while announcing his forthcoming resignation, that at 63 he is too old to lead the party into another election. But neither does he appear to want David Davis, who is widely reckoned to be the greatest beneficiary of the existing system.

Rather Mr Howard is mainly responding to the parliamentary party’s desire for “a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power” back in the direction of ordinary working MPs, to adapt the Bennite terminology of Labour’s October 1974 manifesto. They believe that the Hague reforms of 1997-98, which enfranchised the ordinary members in a run-off once MPs had narrowed the choice down to just two, resulted in the fiasco of IDS’s benighted leadership.

Conservative MPs now wish to go back to something as close as possible to the status quo ante, as obtained in the period between the ending of the so-called Magic Circle in 1965 and the reforms of 1998: not quite an all-parliamentary franchise, but rather a severely attenuated form of indirect grassroots participation via the medium of the association and area chairmen who dominate the party’s 1,200-1,500-strong constitutional college.

The instincts of these worthies — often gong-hungry — tend to be different from those of ordinary members. In leadership matters, they are frequently deferential to the MPs in a way that the masses are not: indeed, it is little understood that had the matter been left up to senior constituency officers, the result of the Clarke-Duncan Smith joust of 2001 would have been dramatically closer.

Moreover, the views of most of the 54 new MPs are unknown: even some of the shrewdest vote-counters in the Whips’ office do not yet have much idea of where they stand. While it may be surmised that the vast majority of newcomers are broadly within the post-Major Eurosceptic consensus, that does not mean that they would necessarily vote against Mr Clarke. Some may decide that he is a “heavy hitter” who will “biff” Tony Blair. Ironically, one key Davis operative, Derek Conway — a hardline opponent of the single currency — voted for Mr Clarke last time on those grounds after his hero was eliminated.

But why would Mr Clarke be such a disaster — even with a French “non”? Despite all the self-flagellation about the IDS debacle, the party did make the right choice in 2001. And it was not just the grassroots who made it: it also included Baroness Thatcher, William Hague, Mr Howard, Michael Ancram and Mr Davis. They all knew that if Mr Clarke had won, the party would have been torn apart under the pressure of its leader’s relentless determination to impose his Europhile agenda. The Duncan Smith leadership, however inadequate, at least passed on a united party to Mr Howard.

With Mr Clarke as leader, all Tony Blair would have had to do is bring a European motion before the Commons every week and watch the internal Tory civil war re-erupt. After all, Mr Clarke — who has famously appeared on pro-single currency platforms with the Prime Minister — has only one critique of Government European policy — that it is too timid.

For all his “centrism”, Mr Clarke is, in a curious way, the most “reactionary” of the potential candidates. Among the many counter-intuitive discoveries made by the Portillistas’ extensive private polling in 2001 was a massive hostility, even among Tories, to Mr Clarke’s connections to BAT and its role in selling cigarettes to Third World children. This reflects a broader aspect of his political persona: there is little in his record to suggest that Mr Clarke has thought deeply about how to modernise the party and to forge it into a New Model Army.

“Modernisation” does not just mean more blacks and gays, as the traditionalists’ caricature would have it; rather, it means simple professionalisation and basic political strategising, of the kind that Lynton Crosby brought belatedly to Mr Howard’s party. While MPs fret in an “I’m all right, Jack” fashion about the minutiae of the loss of their powers to the party board, they risk once again losing sight of what the Prime Minister calls the “big picture”. As the party surveys the emerging leadership rules, it needs to ask itself one question: cui bono?

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