Politics
Has Clarke's hour come at last?
Published 19 March 1999
Simon Hefferhears some Tories echoing John Redwood's old slogan: "no change, no chance"
William Hague's decree of tolerance towards those of his MPs who wish the country would join the euro - nothing new in that, by the way, since an agreement to differ had always been understood - has left at least one important thing unaffected. A number of Conservative MPs harbour the conviction that Kenneth Clarke will, sooner rather than later, become their leader. These people discreetly hope that the various elections the beleaguered party must fight in the next three months will give them a springboard to install their man in the office of the leader of the opposition.
There is no evidence that Clarke himself is playing these games. He is neither organising nor encouraging anyone else to do so on his behalf. That is not his style. If Clarke wished to engineer an assault on Hague, the last place he would choose to do it would be in secret.
Instead, he beavers away at his various industrial jobs - notably his wonderfully politically incorrect, high-profile role with British American Tobacco - and at his round of media appearances. He uses the international conference circuit to promulgate the Clarke view of Toryism, but it is largely a case of Clarke being clever enough to let us all know that he is, as John Major was wont to say, still there.
Such tactful behaviour is, however, taken as a green light by his supporters for their covert activities on his behalf. Those activities do not include nakedly promoting Clarke. They do, however, involve encouraging those unimpressed with Hague - whether in terms of the present leader's personality or policies, such as they are - to think what is still supposed to be the unthinkable for Conservatives, that they may have to ditch another leader.
The hope of the Clarkeites is that the forthcoming election results will be so bad that their man will appear as the only credible choice. They do not worry unduly about the elections to the devolved assemblies on 6 May, because they recognise that the Tory leader probably could not be invented who would inspire a great success in those. Nor are they unduly concerned by the local elections the same day, even though they will be a more direct reflection of Hague's abilities as leader in England, where his party still enjoys some currency. The European elections on 10 June are a different matter.
A pro-European Conservative Party - called, to the chagrin of the official party leadership, just that - is fielding candidates. One opinion poll suggested these candidates might obtain 14 per cent of the vote. The official Conservative vote might then be down to the high teens itself, with the threat of further erosion by the growing UK Independence Party, which numbers among its supporters many former Conservatives annoyed at Hague's refusal to rule out participation in the euro as a matter of constitutional principle.
The Tory leadership knows that people such as Clarke (not to mention Michael Heseltine and Edward Heath) instinctively support what the breakaway pro-European party stands for. But it also knows that no Conservative MP would openly endorse a rebel candidate against an official one, as it could lead to their expulsion from the party. One grandee might just dare the leadership to expel him by making clear his own, unreconstructed views; but that grandee will not be Clarke.
The reality is that the political fate of any MPs who broke away to support the rebels would be like that of the Labour MPs who joined the SDP after 1981. Indeed, it might be even worse. The SDP had relatively strong support in the country for a time. Whether Clarke's supporters like it or not, they are a minority taste among the party rank and file: however unenthusiastic many of the faithful are about Hague, they are far more angered by what they see as the disloyalty of big box-office names such as Clarke. Were such men to go, the lamentations would be far worse outside the party than within it, and many apostate Tories might consider coming back.
A few MPs who supported Hague in 1997 would not support him now. And if the Tory vote in the European elections turns out to be derisory, some MPs will think about forcing a leadership contest - which it takes 25 of them to do. Some are already terrified that the next election could be even worse than the last, and the John Redwood slogan from 1995 - "no change, no chance" - is starting to echo around.
William Hague, though, is in a stronger position than this might suggest. If the Tories do badly on 10 June, it will matter relatively little to many of the rank and file, who regard the European Parliament as a hostile, alien assembly and certainly not a yardstick by which the success of their leader should be measured. As the grass roots now have a vote in leadership contests, that matters. If the party does become further destabilised after the elections, Hague has a clear and precedented remedy. Like Major in 1995, he can resign and fight again on his record. He would probably win and, if he didn't, it is a fair bet that someone who was not Clarke, and did not share Clarke's views on Europe, would.
The Clarke supporters are so worked up about the Hague view of Europe that they forget that the party in the country is not. Hague will only be removed if the party rank and file are convinced that they could find a better leader on the domestic issues - the economy, health, education, transport and so on - that concern them far more day to day. If Clarke's secret army cannot shift the ground on which it is fighting its guerrilla war to issues other than Europe, and convince a Eurosceptical party that the country would, after all, be safe in Clarke's hands, then it might as well not bother to fight at all.
The writer, a "Daily Mail" columnist, is our Tory party correspondent
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