POLITICS

Message to the Tory party: Ken Clarke is Michael Heseltine without the hypocrisy

BORIS JOHNSON

With a long, gibbering wail John Major will finally be defenestrated this autumn by the Conservative Party. That, at least, is this week's wisdom. Never mind that we have been here so many times before, say the anti-Majorites. This time his number is truly up.

There is no longer any point in pretending to unite behind a man whose political foot- work has brought us Nolan and Scott, they say: whose non-Midas touch is so developed that he, not the Shell oil company, seems to have been humiliated by the decision not to dump some platform harmlessly at sea. Per- haps, this time, they are right.

All one can reasonably ask of those who would give us a new prime minister, though, is that they make a convincing case for some- one else. Brooding on this point, I was look- ing at the front bench and trying to imagine which of the present Cabinet had any of the qualifications which I, personally, would find attractive in a prime minister; when suddenly a possibility occurred. If one was forced to make a snap decision, there are many good reasons why one might be tempted to plump for a man of 55, who has held most of the big offices of state in the Thatcher administra- tion and since, who has presided over the health and education services, without being noticeably devoured by the lobbies.

He has also been Home Secretary, and this week saw his 25th anniversary as an MP. I mean Kenneth Harry Clarke, punchy, paunchy son of a Midlands shopkeeper, for- mer President of the Cambridge Union and jazz lover. However you side in recent dis- pute with Mr Eddie George over interest rates and inflation, Clarke must take at least some of the credit, as Chancellor, for the nation's presently exceptional economic per- formance. Clarke would be blokish and reas- suring where Michael Portillo is, at present, challenging and aloof. Clarke would be can- did where Major is tortured.

Clarke would be bouncy where Major seems so often to lead with his glass chin. If you seek a new prime minister, if that is what you really want, then Clarke would be a scrapper, a redoubtable opponent of Tony Blair. Yet try putting this idea to MPs as they plot in the members' Lobby, and they will sigh impatiently and look over your shoulder. Out of the question, they say. Clarke has put himself beyond the pale. Why, pray? Because Clarke is in favour of the single European currency. And when one stops to think, one realises this is indeed a considerable obstacle.

Only the other day, Clarke was in Brus- sels seriously discussing with his confreres in the `Ecofin' the mechanics of moving to the final stage of monetary union, and whether to call the resulting coin the florin, the crown or the shilling. Fair enough, then. Clarke, alas, has disqualified himself by his stance on perhaps the most impor- tant issue of our time. To choose him would be a triumph for the Europhile wing of the party, just when the sceptics seem to be winning so many of the arguments.

So who do they assume will be prime min- ister instead, these dozens of right-wingers who are allegedly set to provoke a challenge of John Major? Everywhere one goes, the cry is the same. Michael Heseltine is about to complete the coup he began in 1990.

Even the most loyally Majorite Cabinet minister will let slip that, of course, he voted for Michael in the last leadership election. It will be Heseltine by Christmas. Perhaps there is some reasoning in this apostasy. It defeats me, however. Com- pared to Heseltine's vision of Britain's future, Clarke's approach to European integration seems cautious and empirical.

Listen to Heseltine in his notorious 1989 manifesto, The Challenge of Europe: Can Britain Win?', as he explains, in his sub- Churchillian rhythms, his longing for faster, deeper, European integration. 'Behind the headlines, beneath the flamboyant national gestures, there is a relentless momentum,' he says of the European project. According to Heseltine, 'No truly unified market can exist without a single currency,' and he warns, in his gravelly, harrumphing way, that Britain should not be seen to be lag- gardly on the question.

Is it for Heseltine that Mr Norman Lam- ont is proposing to be a stalking-horse this `Sony I'm early, the trains were on time.' autumn, the Norman Lamont who has rekindled the debate about pulling out of the Community altogether? Mr Heseltine also tells us in his book that he would be quite happy to be rid of frontier controls at ports and airports: baroque relics, appar- ently, of a nationalist past. Is it so that this man may snatch the crown that Mr Charles Wardle is allegedly toying with the notion of launching the attack on John Major, the same Charles Wardle who resigned from the Government because he was alarmed at the Government's weakness in defending its border controls against European law?

`There is nowhere for us to go except as part of a European consortium,' growls Heseltine. Notice that exquisitely Heseltini- an conception. Europe is a consortium, nothing but an aggregation of businesses, and he wants to be the Chief Executive Officer to take UK PLC into the final merger. Heseltine is a corporatist, who still believes that ministers should be out with their pangas, hacking a path for business- men; who contrives to believe in the paramount importance of a British-owned car industry, while selling Rover to BMW.

Yes, yes, say those right-wing plotters who are attempting to reconcile themselves to a Heseltine victory. This is all old stuff. Hezza will do a deal with Foreign Secretary Portillo. He will be locked in to a Euro-sceptic foreign policy. In other words, they are going to back Heseltine, rather than Ken Clarke, because unlike Ken Clarke, Mr Heseltine is unprinci- pled enough to deny his faith.

It may very well be that Mr Major's posi- tion is irremediable, that he cannot win the next general election. It may very well be that enough MPs now believe that Mr Hes- eltine has the persona and campaigning style to fire up the activists and save the seats of at least some of them. There is, though, no polling evidence to support this.

More to the point, there is no morality or principle in exchanging Mr Major for the self-annointed 'President of the Board of Trade'. Either it will be a victory for the European faction, in which case it will be a disaster for the party. Or else there will be no change in policy, in which case it amounts to nothing more than a confidence trick. It may fool Tory backbenchers. It will not fool the electorate.

Boris Johnson is assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph.