If there is one thing Labour does not fear, it is Ken Clarke as Leader of the Opposition
FREDERICK FORSYTH
There are quite a few in the Conservative party who genuinely believe that its emergence from the present abyss would be best achieved by the elevation to its leadership of Mr Kenneth Clarke. I fear they either dupe themselves or permit themselves to be duped by a skilful campaign of disinformation, Six arguments are habitually advanced, all fallacious.
Prominent among them is the canard that Labour really fears the supremacy of Ken Clarke. It is a lie sedulously put about by fulltime Labour propagandists and, amazingly, swallowed by some sections of the Tory media. One can understand the BBC being a willing party, but the Mail? Yet the Mail has given space to Derek Draper on this topic.
Back in the Cold War we called it by its Russian name: disinforrnatsiya. To persuade your enemy that you utterly dread him taking the course of action you actually want him to take is the oldest trick in the book. Yet it still works for the gullible, and Millbank Tower is a modern master of disinfotmatsiya. New Labour longs for the final wipe-out of any muscled Tory opposition and rightly surmises that Mr Clarke is the way to get it.
Another chestnut is that Mr Clarke could knock spots off Tony Blair in the Commons. Really? In four years KC might, as the most recent Toiy chancellor, have damaged Gordon Brown, even from the back benches. He spoke several times and failed to remove a scratch of paint from the Brown limousine. In any case, William Hague regularly reduced Tony Blair to hamburger steak at Prime Minister's Questions; come 7 June, it did not matter a jot.
Clarke supporters would have it that their rotund icon has a jovial demeanour that voters will warm to. Alas, there is another side. Behind the geniality lurks a towering arrogance, a serious contempt for those of a different view from his own, whom he regards as simply stupid. That happens to include about 80 per cent of the present membership of the party in the country. One might add that to lead this demoralised, defeated and schismatic party back to the high ground is going to take four years of gruelling hard work. Mr Clarke's middle name is actually Harry, but Indolent or Lackadaisical would have done just as well.
The most oft-iterated argument for his elevation is that he has been in ministerial and Cabinet office, while lain Duncan Smith has not. There are two rebuttals to this. The first is that on 2 May 1997 Tony Blair led an entire Cabinet into Downing Street, not one of whom had a single hour of ministerial experience behind them, save one who had briefly been a very junior minister 18 years earlier. The PM himself became and remains master of all he surveys. As Lord Deedes wrote recently, anyone entering Downing Street is immediately enveloped by a hugely supportive machine; the same applies to other departmental ministers. Kenneth Clarke's entire ministerial career began after the Tories entered office in 1979: he always had that civil service machine to do 90 per cent of the work for him.
(Apropos, his career as a minister took off in the shadow of Margaret Thatcher, upon whom ten years later he was able to pour his contempt in buckets when she was mortally stricken.) This leads to the second point: government and opposition are poles apart, as the exMajor ministers in Hague's shadow Cabinet failed to grasp. It is the time in opposition that gives the true measure of a politician.
In shadow Defence Duncan Smith made a huge impression. He impressed the defence chiefs, won most-favoured status with the Americans over Geoff Hoon with all his vast back-up, raised the Euro-army issue from oblivion to a major cause for concern, and hammered Hoon and Blair to the ropes on the appalling state of our armed forces manning levels and equipment. For those four years Kenneth Clarke was completely invisible_ Finally, one cannot avoid looking at the record of Kenneth Clarke when he last held high office. Hard facts simply refuse to go away, and all the spinning in the world will not, at the last, efface them.
On the morrow of the 1992 election the Conservative party was the party in and of government, endowed with what purported to be the most efficient election-winning machine in Europe. Five years later, it was a shattered, defeated, demoralised, nearbankrupt hulk. Quite a metamorphosis. Were the Martians responsible? The tooth fairy? Santa Claus? One need look no further than the most powerful and influential voices in that Cabinet. One of them was Kenneth Clarke.
Ministerial success? Did Elphinstone succeed in withdrawing from Kabul? Did Chelmsford shine at Isandlwana? Was Smith brilliant at the helm of the Titanic? One is bemused at the number who seem to feel that a co-architect of the most unmitigated disaster to be inflicted on the party in a century is now the man to save it until one sees the names. Howe, Hurd, Heseltine, Brittan, Patten, Gummer, Taylor, Currie: of course.
One would like — oh yes, really — to avoid the European issue, but, though dormant for the nonce, it will, like all unresolved quandaries, rise again. We are still going to have to make that damned choice sooner or later. When an unresolved quandary threatens to tear you apart, sooner is better than later.
When John Major returned from Maastricht with his 'opt-out', few realised what a double-edged sword it was. Our 14 partners had a resolved policy: the euro as from 1 January 1999; abolition of national currency from the same date in 2002. We, however, had a choice: do we, don't we? By 1995 it was clear that this was tearing the Conservatives to pieces. The only possible recourse was to resolve it — fast, Back in 1975 Harold Wilson had a similar dilemma. His party, too, was split down the middle on accepting or revoking Heath's entry, on the worst conceivable conditions, into the Common Market. His masterstroke was to consult the people by referendum. The people's verdict closed the issue down; the Labour schism vanished (or at least went well underground).
Some of us begged John Major almost on bended knee to take the same recourse, and suture at a stroke the division tearing the Conservatives apart. He was (or said he was) minded to do so. Two voices at his elbow, Heseltine and Clarke, warned him not to let the thought cross his mind or face their resignations and his own ruin. Thanks a lot. Ken; haven't you done enough damage?
Peter Obome returns next week.
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