Now he fears that little will happen because Mr Reid will take a year to bed in. In the meantime, he clearly believes that Mr Reid has taken a risk by delaying police mergers and said that Megan’s Law, the American child protection measure that allows parents to know the whereabouts of paedophiles, will not work in Britain. He said he told Mr Blair that any new home secretary would take a year to get on top of the issues. “It will simply stall the reform process and I thought a change would have that effect,” he said. “I think that is what has happened.”
So Mr Blair should have toughed it out, refused to react to the headlines and kept him? “Well, I think he should have stayed with me in this post and I certainly think he should have retained his commitment to the reform process.”
Mr Clarke was sacked on Thursday, May 4, on the evening before the local election results had come through. Mr Blair had been warned that they would be dismal. While bad, they could have been a lot worse. Mr Clarke clearly thinks that his departure was not unconnected. “He needed to get the full picture and he had not got it at the time he decided what to do.”
With a smile Mr Clarke denied the many stories that Mr Blair and he had parted company in the Downing Street rose garden, the Prime Minister with tears in his eyes. They never even met there. “It was his view of what was necessary. I did not agree. The idea that it was a tremendously emotional event with him weeping on my shoulder or with me weeping on his is completely incorrect.”
On Mr Reid’s decision to delay mergers of police forces until the autumn he said that there was a risk that, by appearing to slow down, momentum can be lost and implementation may not go ahead. “It is a risk, not a certainty,” he said. He was equally doubtful about Mr Reid’s move to resurrect the prospect of a Megan’s Law in Britain. “The public’s fear about dangerous people is real and tangible. It is right for tabloids to have campaigns. The question is how you respond. For my money it is important to respond in a balanced way and focus on the issue itself, which is public protection.
“The problem about Megan’s Law is that all the evidence is that it does not work in terms of public protection and can give rise to issues of vigilantism, which is dangerous and a bad thing. I don’t think we should respond to the tabloid media just by saying ‘yes’. We should respond by saying, ‘You have a legitimate concern about public protection and we are trying to address it.’ ”
Turning to Mr Blair’s future, Mr Clarke said that the crucial post-election meeting of MPs was characterised by a lack of confidence about the direction of the party. A few people had spoken about an immediate transition to Gordon Brown, but: “The central theme was a sense of being becalmed, a desire to get some kind of purpose and direction about what we ought to achieve. Today if we look at the Labour Party generally there is a sense of uncertainty about the direction we are going to follow and we have to recover that. My preferred option has been and remains that Tony Blair stays as leader and Prime Minister to complete the execution of the manifesto upon which he was elected in 2005 and then hands over to a new leader who would prepare the manifesto for 2009-10. That is the logic of his statement before the last election.
“The logic of him carrying through the manifesto would point to 2008, as I have always said. I do think there is a sense of Tony having lost his sense of purpose and direction, so my advice to him is to recover that sense of purpose and direction and that remains the best option. I intend between now and the party conference to say things about the future of the party, which would be about what I think that sense of purpose and direction should be.
“Now I hope that would motivate Tony to recover that reforming leadership and style, which was his great strength over the first seven or eight years of his premiership.”
Even if Mr Blair went earlier the same would apply to Mr Brown. “Gordon also needs that sense of leadership and direction about where the party is going and how it is moving forward and that is what we are lacking at the moment. What we are lacking at the moment is a sense of leadership and direction, so that can either be solved by Tony himself recovering in the way he has the capacity to do — that would still be the best solution — or by Gordon being elected with that sense of leadership and direction himself, and offering that to the party and the country.”
As before, Mr Clarke did not rule himself out as a candidate, although he made plain his belief that Mr Brown will succeed. He said that under either Mr Blair or Mr Brown he would want to make a comeback, not just for the sake of it, but to make reforming changes. “That is my frustration about leaving office when I did, because I felt it would be a three or four-year mission to get the Home Office into shape and I looked forward to the challenge of doing that.”
He was not going to walk off into the sunset. “I would love office if I could do a job that would make a difference,” he said. “What I am doing now is trying to deal with my history and record and then I will put that completely behind me. I feel I have to put that straight. Then I will talk about the future of the party and what we have to do in the future to change Britain and renew ourselves and challenge for the next election in an effective way.
“I will not be a running commentator on Home Office affairs or a Home Secretary manqué. I will be an interesting, challenging backbencher with ideas for the future of the party.”
50 DAYS OF REID
Announces he is sending junior minister to US to look at Megan’s Law, giving parents more information about paedophiles in their neighbourhood
