Clarke's record in opposition is woeful. When his party needed him he retreated into his hobbies: cricket, jazz, bird-watching and hawking fags around the world

Most people in the Conservative Party now realise they have been a truly lamentable opposition. The talk in Blackpool has been of little else. There are even those who suspect the Tories have enjoyed beating themselves up about it. At Francis Maude's chairman's drinks reception one member of the shadow cabinet whispered in my ear: "It's OK. The Tories have always gone in for a bit of S&M." But in the end they will have to stop the self-flagellation and choose a candidate capable of leading them in opposition with genuine hunger and aggression.

It has often been assumed that Ken Clarke would most comfortably take on this role, as the lone big beast capable of landing blows on Tony Blair and, perhaps more important, Gordon Brown. But in eight long years of opposition Clarke has not been a big beast, he has been a pussycat. Just when his party most needed him, he retreated into his hobbies: cricket, jazz, bird-watching and hawking fags around the world.

His record as an opposition politician has been woeful. In the time Clarke has been off the front-line political scene, websites such as They Work For You(www.theyworkforyou.com), Public Whip and Fax Your MP(www.faxyourmp.com) have been holding our political class to account like never before. They show that Clarke's record does not stand up to scrutiny. On every measure he underperforms compared to his main rivals. He has intervened in fewer debates, voted less often, asked fewer parliamentary questions and been less responsive to the public.

In his first platform speech in nine years, Clarke spat that new Labour had "treated parliament with indifference". Well at least they turn up to vote. According to the Public Whip website, Clarke was present when his party needed him just 36 per cent of the time, putting him 618th out of 645 MPs. His rivals David Davis and David Cameron managed 55 per cent and 66 per cent respectively.

His record on parliamentary questions is even worse. These are the lifeblood of British politics: ministers can be toppled and prime ministers humbled by a judiciously placed question. The more humdrum, and equally important, function of the parliamentary question is to wring facts from ministers on behalf of constituents: how many bobbies there are on the beat; which companies have won contracts to run local schools; how much money has been spent on a new PFI hospital.

According to They Work For You(www.theyworkforyou.com), Cameron has already asked a respectable 19 questions in this parliament and Davis an impressive 51. Clarke has asked none. This should not just disqualify him as a credible opposition politician, it should make his constituents in Rushcliffe question whether he deserves to represent them at all. Even the most arrogant of his rivals, Liam Fox, has asked one question and Sir Malcolm Rifkind has managed ten.

His final test comes in the shape of Fax Your MP (www.faxyourmp.com), which judges how well MPs respond to correspondence. Davis replied to 100 per cent of messages within 14 days. Cameron also did well, with a response rate of 85 per cent. But Clarke could only be bothered to reply to 62 per cent of correspondence in a decent time.

So why should anyone on the left care that Clarke is such a useless back-bench MP? The answer is that there is a real possibility that he could win the Conservative Party leadership. And with him at the helm, the Liberal Democrats might just consider a coalition in the event of a hung parliament.

We have grown used to seeing Clarke as the acceptable face of Conservatism, but this is deeply misleading. His record as chairman of the tobacco company BAT alone should cause us serious concern. It is quite extraordinary that the Conservatives are still considering him as a leader after revelations in the Guardian that he misled parliament over his company's role in tobacco smuggling. But the party is desperate.

The public's political memory is short, but Clarke's dismissive attitude to questions about his BAT directorship is reminiscent of an earlier scandal. No one should forget the 76 people who died from the side effects of the drug Opren, licensed by the British government in the early 1980s. As health minister in 1982, Clarke described the problems of people who had taken the drug as "no more than the patients becoming lobstered".

As secretary of state for health, and education he was a classic right-winger, and can take much of the credit for introducing the internal market to the public sector. As home secretary he helped dismantle the work of the one truly liberal holder of the post in the past 20 years, Douglas Hurd, by refusing to accept that prison is a cause of crime, not a solution to it.

Kenneth Clarke may be a familiar face, but he is also idle, unprincipled and right-wing. If the 300,000-strong Tory membership ends up voting for him, it will be bad enough for the Conservative Party. But their most masochistic and self-indulgent move could yet turn out to be catastrophic for the rest of us.

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