ANOTHER VOICE

The best way to choose the next Tory leader

MATTHEW PARRIS

One misty morning in September 1809, two men who had until days beforehand sat round the same Tory Cabinet table met with pistols at dawn on Putney Heath. Vis- count Castlereagh, the secretary for war, had been outraged at the way in which the foreign secretary, George Canning, had outmanoeuvred him for pre-eminence within a party whose leader, the Duke of Portland, was resigning. Castlereagh quit and challenged Canning to a duel.

Canning, who was 39, was terrified. The son of a destitute widow who had married an actor — and distrusted as an arriviste he had no experience of duelling and had never fired a gun in his life. But to refuse would have meant shame. Both men turned up with their seconds and their pistols, Castlereagh confidently humming songs by his favourite tenor, Catalini, and Canning's second guarding the pistol CI must cock it for him, I cannot trust him to do it him- self). Both men shot at ten yards, and missed. Castlereagh's second begged him to leave the field, but he refused, and shot a second time, hitting Canning.

`Perhaps I ought to remain? Are you sure we are done?' wailed Canning, blood pour- ing from his thigh. The foreign secretary staggered from the field, honour not only salvaged but enhanced, to prepare for death. But it was only a surface wound.

Polite society was outraged. 'We regret to state,' trilled the Morning Post, opening its shocked report, 'that a Duel took place yesterday between Lord CASTLEREAGH and Mr CANNING . . . ' King George III, private- ly expressing the hope that his entire Tory Cabinet would shoot each other, was vastly amused. Canning was invited to the palace to show his wound. Castlereagh resumed his career after a short pause but never challenged Canning again.

It was a most satisfactory outcome. Some 190 years later, I wonder whether those members of the Tory shadow Cabinet who now contend for leadership of their party might be persuaded to settle the matter as Canning and Castlereagh did? It now seems to me imperative, if that treacherous party is to recover its unity, that the loser be wounded, broken, or preferably killed. Proposals in the Times that the whole party should be consulted sound too cum- bersome, but I share my paper's view that the dazed and depleted army of Conserva- tive MPs cannot be entrusted with this momentous decision. Ideally John Major would have carried on for a while, but from nowhere but the ivory towers of newspaper editors' offices does that now seem possi- ble; his party have made it impossible.

But if he is to go, then what, on so little acquaintance with the new line-up at West- minster, can the Tory infantry at Westmin- ster know of their candidates' fitness to lead them into battle? This is especially true because the contenders are trying to outbid each other in their claims to be fresh and new. 'How little you luiow of me!' is taken as a positive recommendation in poli- tics these days.

There are half a dozen or more con- tenders. It would be inappropriate, exces- sively bloody, and far too noisy, to scare the bird life and dawn joggers on Putney Heath with a succession of duels designed to ensure that each candidate faced each of the others. I do not therefore propose a series of heats and semi-finals, among whose disadvantages would be the possibili- ty that (say) Stephen Dorrell killed Ken- neth Clarke at the outset, denying us the opportunity to see Clarke killing (say) Michael Howard.

No. I propose we begin by proceeding according to the present rules, with a series of ballots culminating in a run-off between the two most popular candidates. It is this final championship which should be con- ducted with pistols on Putney Heath, in the presence of the press, and Robin Oakley of the BBC. The duel should be to the death, so that whoever wins cannot be stalked through the next five years by the rival he beat, queering his pitch. If you baulk, remind yourself how much better it would have been if John Major had killed John Redwood in 1995, rather than just beating him in a ballot. Bullets not ballots.

In the unhappy event that each simultane- ously shot the other, the process would start all over again with the surviving contenders.

You scoff? But duelling has a long and persistent role in English social history. From Bacon onwards judges had pro- nounced the duel akin to murder, but British juries were always reluctant to con- vict, reasoning, no doubt, that if both par- ties consented to settle a dispute privately in this way, that was their business. In pub- lic life, the Duke of York duelled with Colonel Lennox in 1789. Charles James Fox and William Pitt the Elder were both involved (separately) in duels of honour. The Earl of Cardigan duelled with Captain Tuckett in 1840, a jury of his peers contriv- ing to acquit the Earl of wounding. Reports of duels were still appearing in the Times at the beginning of this century, though the influence of women (Queen Victoria was disgusted by duelling) has sadly under- mined the practice.

It should be revived, and where better than among a profession whose reputation for honour and integrity has been cruelly diminished? In this regard, it is the duel in 1829 between the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, and the Earl of Winchelsea, which I take as my lesson for Wellington's 20th-century successors. Urged by King George IV, the Duke had become Tory leader a year previously, having earlier declared that it would be an act of madness to accept this poisoned chalice. He had to include arch-rivals in his Cabinet, the Tory party being hopelessly split over Catholic emancipation. On assuming office, Welling- ton upset the expectations both of his sup- porters and the King by working with Peel toward a Bill for Catholic emancipation.

The Duke admitted quite plainly that he had changed his mind. But on a point of honour he felt it right to underscore the genuineness of his motives by agreeing to a duel with the Rome-o-sceptic Earl of Winchelsea. Both men survived the duel. Winchelsea gave the Tory leader no further trouble; nobody thereafter could question his motives, and, for once, the public was able to place its faith in a Tory leader's belief in his own policies.

If John Redwood were now prepared to place his life on the line I could respect him. Kenneth Clarke, one feels sure, would accept the challenge — the more bravely for presenting a large target. Eurosceptics are all thin. Peter Lilley would blanch, I believe, but go through with it. I would like to hope Stephen Dorrell would reach palely for his pistol, while Bill Cash, who is an honourable man, would do the decent thing and shoot himself if he failed to shoot a Europhile.

As to the last two, let us adapt Byron, whose own great uncle killed Chaworth in a duel in 1765.

Can none remember that eventful day, That ever glorious almost fatal fray, When HOWARD'S leadless pistols met HAGUE'S eye, And Smith Square myrmidons stood laughing by?

Matthew Parris is a columnist and parlia- mentary sketchwriter of the Times.