HAGUE'S NOT FOR TURNING

In an interview with Anne McElvoy William

Hague talks about children and religion — and his one political mistake

SO. William: there's an election coming; if not in May, then all too soon. You've been leader of Her Majesty's opposition for four years. You're somewhere between ten and 211 points adrift in the polls, and the focus groups deliver verdicts such as 'a bit of a wally'. What's gone wrong?

'The evidence is that there is huge dissatisfaction with the government, but people have not necessarily decided to vote Tory.' Hague replies stoutly. If he is heading for an election cull, he is taking it remarkably well. But if he lost by 100 seats or more, wouldn't he feel that the public had nominated him the Tory party's weakest link, and be obliged to slope off the set? The moon face remains amiable, implacable. 'I'm planning for success, and, if I did have any such thoughts, I wouldn't share them. No one ever succeeded in anything by having 87 scenarios for failure.'

Asked why New Labour still commands the battlefield, he puts it down to the golden economic legacy. and 'the Tories being in power for so long that people were prepared to give Blair a decent chance'.

Such is the medicine that Conservatives gulp down to palliate their unpopularity. But maybe the real situation is worse. Perhaps the public, for all the dissatisfaction with and imperfections of this government, really rather likes this Blairite mixture: a dollop of right-on social attitudes, a spoonful of extra taxation sweetening the freemarket mixture?

For the first time, his expression flickers. The word `Blairite' produces an unmistakable wince. 'If there are so many people keen to have many more years of Labour government, we would meet them somewhere. You don't meet them. There is disillusionment and growing contempt.'

There are two Tory views of the Prime Minister. One is that he's a consummate professional, a class act to be envied and emulated. The other is that he is a contentfree hologram, a cynical joke practised on the gullible British people. What does Hague think? 'A mixture of the two.' he says. 'Blair is an able man. But he is a fraud as well. He says the first thing that comes into his head. He says things that are not true and he knows they are not true. He says that the House of Lords blocked the Hunting Bill. He lies about not having increased taxes. He is a man who doesn't tell the truth. The country has never had lower standards for integrity, honour, decency.'

Throughout this tirade, he looks entirely controlled, as if he were delivering a setpiece denunciation. There is no sign of passion, let alone the raw animus that afflicted relations between, say, Kinnock and Thatcher. Doesn't Blair make him feel anything as basic as anger or dislike?

'I don't take politics personally and I don't have strong hatreds. That's not me.' So would William and Tony get along if they weren't on opposite sides of the fence? 'We are not the same sort of people, really. He's more metropolitan and I'm more provincial. He's more emotional than I am. My approach is to lead people through a difficult situation, much more than "let's burst into tears about everyone's problems".'

Oh, come on. William. This stuff about metropolitan versus provincial, liberal elites versus decent folks, Ilkley versus Islington: it's all a front, isn't it? I mean, here you are, former Oxford Union president and McKinsey management consultant. You lead the Conservative party in your thirties. You're a member of an essentially urban political party, but still trying to come across as some horny-handed son of the land? It won't wash. Meanwhile, people have lost any clear idea of who the real Hague is.

'I'm a mixture and that's a good thing,' he replies, equable as ever. 'I prefer "liberal" and "elite" as terms of abuse to "metropolitan". The only time I use "metropolitan" in a negative way is when people are out of touch with the countryside. Things are imposed on the country by people who live in town. It's fair enough to say that these attitudes are naive or harmful.'

But his language suggests an appeal to the chippier elements in his own party. It sits strangely with his earlier attempts to articulate a modern Conservatism, economically dry but stripped of the pettiness and prejudices of the Thatcher–Major years. The raucous tones of his Commons response to the Nice summit, the harping on asylum-seekers, the threat of EU-occupation of a cowed Britain — all contrast with his earlier, more self-confident vision of how the Tories should respond to Blairism. Whispers from inside Central Office attribute the shift to a recognition, early last year, that he was failing to shore up core voters who needed more attention to their wounded sensibilities.

He quickly denies that any such correction has taken place. Even without the props of the Commons, he's a natural debater — fluent and unprickly under criticism; less comfortable, though, with any subject demanding introspection or selfanalysis. 'I don't have regrets,' he says of his time at the helm. What, none? I reel off the PR glitches: the baseball cap, the pound-sign necklace for Ffion, the 14 pints, the white T-shirted skinhead look. Does he not regret anything? 'The best approach is to be oneself. I still wear a baseball cap when it's hot because those of us who are thin on top need to. People are fed up with artificial image. If there is something not quite right, then I know no better way to deal with it than be myself.'

Four years is a long time not to regret anything. In the end, he makes an admission. 'I should have blocked Jeffrey Archer earlier when he ran as mayor for London. That's quite a big regret.' Why did he misjudge Archer, when all the signs of skulduggery were there from the start? 'Isn't it enough to acknowledge that I made the mistake without asking why?' There is a pained silence. 'I suppose that I wanted to believe that he had sorted out his earlier problems. I wanted a democratic contest in London. I thought I was being fair to give him a chance. I was too fair, I suppose. Anyway, it was the wrong decision.'

Confidence and unflappability are his main assets, but he doesn't inspire instant awe or even excitement. He's much more enjoyable company than people think, but the room doesn't quite light up when he enters. So far he has not generated the Fiihrerprinzip for which his party activists still clamour. Would he address these shortcomings by having elocution lessons like Margaret Thatcher? `No. That's not my style. It would be false. I don't think about my voice. I did have a couple of lessons when I became leader with someone who works with actors, and he taught me to project from the stomach [he suddenly produces a stentorian roar]. That's as much as I wanted.'

Those long, grating 'a's he uses as the indefinite article, the slight yodel in the voice, the odd accentuations — are they a product of Yorkshire or the deformations of the Oxford Union? He looks genuinely perplexed. A horrible five seconds follow in which I perform an impression of William Hague before the man himself. 'I didn't know I did that,' he says neutrally.

His broader problem, surely, is that the professional classes are becoming Blairised in their attitudes. Perhaps they no longer see the Conservative party as their natural home. The rhetoric about Britain's transformation into a 'foreign land' doesn't seem to have chimed with voters beyond the grumbling Tory core. And even some of them say they found its undertones disturbing.

'We'll see, won't we?' says Hague. 'The majority of people want tougher attitudes to crime and they want to keep the pound. The idea that you can't debate the asylum system without being accused of racism is a ludicrous tyranny of political correctness. It's part of my job to break it. Why can't someone say that the asylum situation has to be sorted out without being accused of racism? It must be possible to say that. If it's not, then it's not possible to have a rational debate at all.'

But politicians send signals by the emphasis they give and the language they use. He's keen to refute the charge of xenophobia and insists that he is socially liberal. Indeed, he says, 'I was speaking to the Muslim Councils of Britain and found a huge amount in common. Our policy on schools, broadcasting, Clause 28 — they agree with us.' Gosh, the Muslim Councils. That liberal, eh, William?

'I won't submit to this tyranny of language: what you can and can't say. What would this country be that had signed away its national currency, signed away rights and powers it couldn't get back, whose Parliament would have been turned into a chamber of sycophants and cronies?'

His nightmare vision, of a Britain in the grip of alien control, courtesy of the single currency, assumes that Mr Blair would win a referendum on the issue. 'You won't get a fair referendum out of Mr Blair,' he says. As a non-Tory EMU-sceptic, I find it a bit disconcerting that the leader of the opposition seems to anticipate defeat before the battle is even joined. 'You may be too complacent,' he chides. 'By hook or by crook Blair will set out to join the euro.'

He has strong convictions on abortion (he's against it) and the death penalty (he's for it) — which a lot of Tories might find a touch fundamentalist. 'They are common-sense beliefs which a lot of people share. Anyway, it's a free vote. They should be a matter of conscience.' Would he take a lead on them if he were Prime Minister? 'No.'

Being anti-abortion wasn't a decision he took until he was an MP. He says that he's religious, but that isn't the reason for his stance. Is he church-going? 'Not in the sense you mean — not on a Sunday morning. But,' he adds hurriedly, 'I do go to hundreds of events in churches throughout the year.' I ask if he would bring up any children he may have as Christian? 'I hope so, at some stage.' Are he and Ffion thinking about it? You can sense him girding himself for the plying. 'We're hugely enjoying being married, Ffion and me.' This comes out with maximum uxorious projection. This wasn't the question, of course. 'There is a nice time in marriage when you don't have children. Whatever happens, politics will never have anything to do with it.'

Does he get broody around children? 'Oh, I love visiting schools,' he says, rather desperately. 'A lot of my friends have children.' He has three godchildren — a 21-year-old student niece, the son of his old friend and best man Nick Levy, and the baby son of Brooks Newmark, Conservative candidate for Braintree. 'They don't need me to turn up every day. I send them things from time to time.' At the end of this ordeal, he says to his press secretary, Amanda Plate11, 'Phew, I'm pleased I remembered who they all are.' 'So am I,' says Amanda.

The last book he read was Simon Sebag Montefiore's life of Potemkin, 'a really magnificent piece of history'. Ffion judged the Orange Prize, `so we have tons of novels around and I picked up a couple to read on holiday. Which ones? Can't remember.' The last film he saw was American Beauty (on video), a rather smug take on suburban middle-class hypocrisies. 'Yeah, but quite good fun,' he says. It's a surprising choice for the leader of the Conservative party on a free Saturday night. 'Oh, I'm broad-minded about being poked fun at: even about the values I defend.'

It's a moment that makes me warm to him, a reminder that he is only just 40 this week, and has been required to acquire the veneer of maturity too fast. He has guts and intelligence, and he's nowhere near as judgmental or unnuanced as his speeches make him sound. From that teenage debut until the precocious garland of the Tory leadership was flung at him in the worst of times, he's lived in permanent fast-frame. I'm not sure that the person William Hague can quite keep up with the pace that Hague the politician has set himself. He needs to find his balance, steady his beliefs and become a more consistent, reassuring figure. In other words, he needs time. It's the one thing he may not have.

Anne McElvoy is associate editor of the Independent.