KEN CLARKE may have got some big issues wrong — the euro, for example — but he has got one big issue completely right — Iraq.

When Mr Clarke launched his leadership campaign, he said that he wanted to raise the level of debate that had declined during his lifetime. He certainly did that on Thursday with a heavyweight speech. Typically, he said things that will not be popular in the Conservative Party, which is in a state of complete denial about Iraq. But even Conservative MPs may notice the attention that his views attracted.

In fairness Sir Malcolm Rifkind also opposed the war, but Mr Clarke’s formidable speech was the first to put the war into the leadership election. I never thought I would find myself writing in support of a Clarke speech as he would not naturally be my first choice as leader, although he has been a friend for years.

Mr Clarke was right to call the war “a disastrous decision”. It is remarkable that this needs to be said at all. Iraq has been this country’s biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez, has made Britain and the world a more dangerous place, and yet has hardly been criticised at all by the Conservative Party. There has been a detached indifference to the massive loss of life: 2,000 Americans, probably ten times that number of Iraqis killed, and perhaps 100,000 injured or maimed for life — for what purpose? It may be difficult to see how the US can lose in Iraq, but it is also not easy to see how it can win in an acceptable timeframe. There may be civil war, Iraq may split. You would have to be an extreme optimist to believe that Iraq will be a united, stable Western-style democracy in ten years’ time.

Many of the points that Mr Clarke made are blindingly obvious but have barely been whispered by Conservatives. “The reasons given to Parliament for joining the invasion were bogus.” He might have added that they also keep changing. The latest reason given by President Bush days before the London bombings is that we are fighting in Iraq so as not to be attacked in our own country. To open today the Government’s White Paper, published before the war, with the Prime Minister’s foreword warning us of “the current and serious threat to the UK” and its maps with concentric circles reaching Europe is a reminder of how Tony Blair at least deceived himself and thus the country.

The Government’s arguments about the connection between terrorism and the war also keep changing. At first it said that there was no connection, now it says that Iraq does not justify terrorism. No one ever said that it did. Mr Blair is a master at rejecting points no one has made.

Mr Clarke opposed the war at the time. I opposed it only after the Hutton report. That was the moment when there would have been every justification for the Tory party to have withdrawn its support. Mr Clarke’s speech shows the opportunity the Conservatives missed to fill a role that the country desperately wanted and needed.

He rightly argues that Iraq was “a diversion from the core task of the pursuit and destruction of al-Qaeda”. Indeed, the whole idea of a War on Terror is misconceived since it is based on traditional military strategy and requires an identifiable enemy; but the terrorist enemy is elusive and requires political strategy, not just blind firepower. If Mr Clarke had spoken a day later he might have added that the war has also diverted resources and attention away from key domestic tasks as Americans have now tragically discovered in New Orleans.

He bluntly pins the responsibility on US military tactics for alienating many moderate Iraqis. It is difficult to see how you can win hearts and minds when military strategy initially made so little attempt to distinguish between combatant and non-combatants.

Mr Clarke hit the most sensitive point for the Tories when he said that a true friend of the United States is a candid friend. Here he echoes the criticisms of Mr Blair made by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser. “US presidents are not always right.”

On one point however, Mr Clarke may be wrong, and may find himself outflanked even by the Americans. He believes it would be “immoral to walk away”, and that we should not pull the troops out. Much the same was said about Vietnam. The time has to come when the Iraqis assume responsibility for their own destiny. As Senator Chuck Hagel has said: “Staying the course is not a policy.” Without a stated intention to withdraw, Iraqis may never be ready or willing to take control of their country.

This is a profoundly un-Conservative war. It might have appealed to Gladstone, but even he, I suspect, might have had his doubts. Of course it is true that more democracy would make the Middle East more stable. But democracy cannot be rolled out like Astroturf, and imposing it on backward countries carries huge risks.

Britain and America would have done well to remember the words of a former US president. “The time has passed when America will make every other nation’s conflict our own, or make other nations’ failure our responsibility, or presume to tell the people of other nations how to manage their own affairs. Just as we respect the right of each nation to determine its own future, we also recognise the responsibility of each nation to secure its own future.” That was Richard Nixon in his second inaugural address. He understood better than President Bush both the world and the limits of American power.

Lord Lamont was Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1990-93

Times Recommends

• Preening populism has put us off democracy
• In 2009 as in 1931, debts must be repaid
• Here’s where all the women get off