POLITICS
Mr Clarke and Mr Redwood do have something in common themselves
BRUCE ANDERSON
On Wednesday morning, Alan Clark was triumphant. The outcome of Tuesday's second ballot appeared to vindicate his original view that it would be absurd to hold a leadership election now. He would seem to have a point, for on Wednesday morning only one thing was certain: that Thursday's ballot would resolve nothing. This leadership election would be like an episode in the Afghan civil war. One fac- tion would seize Kabul, but the other war- ring tribes would not surrender; they would merely take to the hills.
But inasmuch as Alan Clark is right, he is right for the wrong reasons. All modern political parties require an element of Fiihroprinzip — a point that Mr Clark should have no difficulty understanding and the Tories cannot begin to recover from their current mess without strong leadership. Some Tory MPs think they agree. Of course we want strong leadership, they say: that is why we revere Maggie. That's what went wrong under poor old Major: no leadership. That's why some of us who do not share his views are backing Ken Clarke: he is the best leader available, while young William Hague is still untried.
But many Tory MPs no longer under- stand the concept of leadership; they have forgotten that it depends on followership. Some of them spent six and a half years undermining everything John Major did, and then complained that he was not a strong leader. They seemed to forget that the party which was sabotaging Mr Major had begun its career in crime by hacking down Margaret Thatcher. It is nonsense to claim that Mr Clarke has some magic gift which would enable him to succeed where Lady Thatcher and Mr Major failed. William Hague and Kenneth Clarke could both be effective leaders, but neither they nor anyone else will be able to lead the party unless and until it comes to its senses.
There is a further problem with the Clarke-as-strong-leader argument. Leaders must work with the grain of their party. They cannot operate in an ideological vacu- um; their own convictions have to har- monise with those of their followers. There would seem to be two striking exceptions to this rule: Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. But they were both in a stronger position than Mr Clarke would be. Mrs Thatcher took over a party — and above all a front bench — many of whose mem- bers were not in sympathy with her. But she had two mutually reinforcing advantages. First, that the old ways of running govern- ment appeared to have utterly failed; sec- ond, the personalities of her potential opponents. Confronted by the breakdown of Keynesianism, the Whitelaws, Carring- tons and Pyms no longer knew what to do. They had lost confidence in their own instincts; she seemed to have confidence in hers, so with varying degrees of foreboding they decided not to impede her. The old Wets were, moreover, gentlemen, who believed in loyalty and thought that form- ing a party within a party was deplorably un-Tory. Given these attitudes, they could not hang together. This was very conve- nient for Margaret Thatcher: she was able to hang most of them separately. The party she led in 1990 was very different from the one she had inherited in 1975.
Mr Blair was also able to transform his party, despite the reservations of many of his MPs. But his position was analogous to Mrs Thatcher's. By the time he became Labour leader, the party's traditional way of operating had been discredited. Mr Blair was able to tell his colleagues that unless they wanted to lose for a fifth time, they had better give him a doctor's mandate.
It may be that the Tory party ought now to give its leader carte blanche; its position could well be thought to be desperate enough to call for such remedies. But that does not explain Mr Clarke's better-than- expected showing, which has carried him far beyond his Europhile core supporters. The Clarkeites are a curious coalition. Some of them are opposed to William Hague on generational grounds. Either they cannot get used to the thought of a leader in his mid-thirties, or they cannot bear the thought of a 36-year-old blocking their own leadership ambitions. 'Young cardinals vote for old popes,' joked Ken Clarke in 1990, when asked why he was supporting Douglas Hurd's campaign. Six and a half years later, the erstwhile young cardinal is himself a potential old pope.
Some of the Eurosceps who are tempted to support Mr Clarke have tried to explain their position by arguing that Europe is slipping down the political agenda. But this is a dangerously complacent attitude. Not only does it ignore Herr Kohl's ambitions; it also ignores Ken Clarke's. Europe is at the heart of Mr Clarke's politics; the Treaty of Rome is entwined with his soul. Until a week ago, it seemed that the Europhiles could never again control the Tory party, but Mr Clarke has other ideas. If he becomes leader, he will want the party to become once again the pro-European party that he and John Gummer joined in the Sixties. His right-wing supporters insist that he will have to compromise, but this is to misunderstand his nature. Ken Clarke has vast reserves of obstinacy and self-confi- dence, and is not a man who calculates his way through political subtleties; when con- fronted by a problem, he puts down his head and charges. He has spent the past three years doing that to the Right, defin- ing his political position not so much in opposition to the Labour party, but in defi- ance of Bill Cash et al. If he becomes lead- er, he will not change.
Nor is Mr Redwood supporting Mr Clarke because he believes that Ken could broker a successful compromise. On the contrary; Mr Redwood's main aim in this campaign was to thwart the one man who could have led the party from the Eurosceptic right-centre. When he stood against John Major in 1995, Mr Redwood had two objectives. The first was to unseat Mr Major, which he knew was unlikely. The second, however, seemed attainable: to destabilise Michael Portillo and to wrest the leadership of the Right away from him. Though Mr Portillo was damaged by the apparent contrast between his own vacilla- tion and Mr Redwood's boldness, he recov- ered, and would still have been a more formidable candidate than Mr Redwood, but for his constituents. With him out of the way, John Redwood is at it again: he is determined to ensure that he is the sole possible right-wing candidate for the Tory leadership. We will deal with William now, some of his hotheads are saying: in two years' time, we will brush Ken aside. If the Tory party were in full command of its senses, it would see the pact between Ken Clarke and John Redwood for what it is: an attempted rerun of the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, with William Hague as Poland. It is as shameless as it is cynical. Neither man is interested in the Tory party except as a vehicle for his own ambition; either man would turn it into a vehicle for Tony Blair's. By the time that this issue is on the news-stands, we will know whether or not they have succeeded.
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