8 SEPTEMBER 2001, Page 9

The new Tory leader must prepare to face down the enemy within

PETER OBORNE

0 ne presumes that Lord Tebbit woke up in a buoyant frame of mind at his home last Sunday morning. The 5-1 hammering meted out to the Germans must have lifted his spirits, as it lifted those of every patriotic Englishman. Nor was that all. The Tebbit soul can only have celebrated as he looked forward to the near certainty of lain Duncan Smith, a decent family man, succeeding to the leadership of the Conservative party.

A certain lightness of demeanour surely descended on Norman Tebbit as he prepared the breakfast, cooked the bacon, made the coffee. Outside the sun was shining brightly. After so many crushing disappointments — the betrayal of John Major, the treachery of Michael Portillo — Tebbit's own man, his hand-picked successor at Chingford, was about to make good.

One imagines the stern Tebbit features brightening yet further at the comforting thud of the good old Sunday Telegraph, that beacon of solid values in a fallen world, as it landed on his doormat. One imagines him striding to the front door to retrieve it.

It is a pity that a camera was not on hand to record the range of emotions that passed across the Tebbit countenance as he picked the paper up: anticipation, bafflement, incredulity, horror, blind fury, all followed by deadening disappointment. Norman Tebbit is not a man who attracts sympathy. But it is impossible not to have some compassion for the forlorn figure, all hope gone, who read lain Duncan Smith's interview with Gyles Brandreth last Sunday morning.

The Clarke camp claims that the interview, with its change of tack on Section 28, smacks of panic, and a last-ditch attempt to attract the votes of liberal Tories. On the contrary, it was the act of a very confident candidate indeed. It was the calculated decision not to appeal to his own party, but to look beyond the result of the contest and towards the country at large.

This certainty — felt by all within the Duncan Smith camp — that the contest is to all intents and purposes over is disputed by Ken Clarke's supporters. The reasoning behind their apparently perverse optimism is to be found in a note now circulating round financial institutions, written by the political strategist Graham Bishop. This pleasingly contrary piece of work (which can be read on wi.m.grahambishop.com) further challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that a Duncan Smith victory would raise the chances of Tony Blair winning a referendum. Graham Bishop, who has links to the Clarke camp, has spent many years cultivating officials at the European Commission. He is a good man to consult if you want to know whether the ECB is to shave another quarter per cent off interest rates. Whether he has his finger on the pulse of the Tory party membership as well remains to be seen. Bishop has at least this much going for him: the members have never been tested in this way before and are impossible to fathom. Nevertheless the remainder of this column will be written on the admittedly hazardous basis that by the time the next issue of The Spectator appears, on 15 September, lain Duncan Smith will have been elected leader.

He faces a tough task. Duncan Smith is well aware that the Hague leadership had been effectively destroyed by the end of his first summer of operations. For him too, it could all be up after three months. Duncan Smith — background Scots Guards and GEC Marconi — is a creature of what Eisenhower used to call the military/industrial complex. He is about to discover that in Britain the political/media establishment matters even more. Duncan Smith is accustomed to good relations with the press. That is a legacy of the 1990s, when he was a subversive figure, the ally of those who were determined to destroy a Conservative government. John Major — and Neil Kinnock before him — were both written up as coming men before arriving in office, then vilified. Neither of them coped with the transition. Duncan Smith must brace himself for the betrayal by the reporters and newspapers he has counted, until today, as friends.

A clever, ruthless, sustained attempt will be made to portray him and his supporters as bigoted, narrow-minded and shallow — he has already enjoyed a foretaste of this in

the reporting of Nick Griffin, the British National party man. His actions will be cast in the worst possible light — he had a glimpse of this when the same papers which had cast him as an extremist for supporting Section 28 portrayed him as inconsistent when he changed his position. Much, though by no means all, of this campaign to diminish the next Tory leader will he guided by New Labour. If history is a guide, Downing Street will ensure that the Tory conference at Blackpool next month will be enlivened each day by the publication of lists of defectors. The Prime Minister will paint a Duncan Smith Tory party as a sect on the margins of political debate, not fit to be given houseroom in decent society.

It is already plain that Tony Blair will have what Lenin used to call his 'useful idiots' within the Conservative party. One of the regrettable features of the leadership campaign has been the readiness of Clarke supporters to denigrate Duncan Smith as extremist. They should bear in mind that every slur is being lovingly recorded by New Labour and will be redeployed in good time. This week's outburst by Andrew Lansley, William Hague's general-election strategist, was a matter of particular wonderment. Lansley boasts Norman Tebbit as his hero, was accused of urging John Major to 'play the race card', and was the architect of Tory attacks on asylum. Now Lansley comes out for Ken Clarke and attacks the Tory party for being racist.

More serious still is the internal resistance movement presently being formed against the next Tory leader. Michael Portillo (a prominent guest along with London's Eurotrash at the Moulin Rouge party on Monday night), Archie Norman, Francis Maude and others have already indicated that they will not serve. Instead of joining battle against Tony Blair they want to form a 'think tank with attitude' (Rick Nye, Central Office head of research, is tipped to run it) to hobble the front-bench team. This proposal is disgraceful. Messrs Norman, Maude, Fortillo et aL might care to reflect that this is the greatest crisis in 200 years of Tory history. Next week's winner should offer them all front-bench jobs and they should gratefully accept. In the past Tory leaders have led coalition governments of national unity. Whether Duncan Smith or Clarke wins this contest, the new leader is entitled to expect a shadow cabinet for party unity.