If the Tories make the wrong move now, they will end up as an arid little debating society
PETER OBORNE
It is an enormously long time since the Tory leadership went into abeyance, with the resignation of William Hague in the early morning of 8 June. Not a ball had been bowled in the Ashes Series, which went on to develop so disastrously for the English cricket team. The last rites of the 2000-2001 football season were still being played out. The foot-and-mouth epidemic was, so government ministers asserted, over. The stock market stood several hundred points higher.
Previous leadership battles have, by contrast with this one, been short and sharp affairs. Barely five days passed between the resignation of Margaret Thatcher and the installation of John Major in No. 10 on 27 November 1990. Seven weeks elapsed between the resignation of John Major on 2 May 1997 and the victory of William Hague on 19 June. This time, however. the Tory party will have been effectively leaderless for more than three months by the time that the 1922 Committee chairman Sir Michael Spicer reveals the decision of the membership at 5.30 p.m. on Wednesday 12 September.
This long interregnum has had a deleterious effect on party discipline. Shorn of a strong central power, anarchy has prevailed. The lines of W.B. Yeats come to mind: The best lack all conviction while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.' A development in last Tuesday's Financial Times was full of menace for the Tories. A front-page story brought news of some fresh government measure. The FT noted that 'opposition parties' had responded with dismay. This innocent little phrase reflects a change in Fleet Street practice. Till now, whatever else political reporters may have thought about the Conservative party, they have accepted that it forms Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and comes top of the pecking order. Now the Conservatives are just lumped in with the Liberal Democrats. Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, etc. And serve them right.
That is one grievous effect of the Tory leadership vacuum. Another is the fact that any loudmouth who fancies getting a few newspaper headlines by sounding off can do so at will, in the sure knowledge that there will be no comebacks. Most prominent in this respect is Steve Norris, at present loosely attached to the Clarke camp. Norris, who served as junior transport minister under John Major, and is now a party vice-chairman has already hinted that he will
leave the Tory party in the event of Duncan Smith winning. He has made remarks to the effect that some of those associated with the Duncan Smith campaign are racist, bigoted and extreme. It is difficult to tell whose interests if any Norris is presently serving — besides, that is, his own. At any rate, no one who cares for the long-term health of the Conservative party could have behaved in the way he has done for the last few months. There is backstairs talk in Downing Street that Tony Blair would be more than happy to offer Norris — and others like him — a peerage in the event that he no longer finds the Tories to his taste.
The period of lawlessness and banditry over the last few months has helped a number of misapprehensions to flourish. The most fundamental of these concerns the nature of the contest itself. Many hold the view that the battle between the pro-European Kenneth Clarke and the Eurosceptical lain Duncan Smith is the cathartic ideological contest which the party has been crying out for since it began to argue over Europe in the 1980s. This interpretation is wide-spread, damaging and the very opposite of the truth.
In fact this contest is about finding the happiest possible accommodation between the two European camps. It is about somehow discovering an almost Marxist synthesis between these warring parties so that they can, if not fuse, at the very least coalesce into an effective political force. In effect it is an argument between those who believe that the Conservative party matters more than ideology and those who believe that ideology matters more than the Conservative party. There are a striking number of senior Tories who believe that a resolution of Britain's relationship with Europe matters more than the survival of the party itself. These figures exist on the Clarke wing — Michael Heseltine is the most notable case — but they are probably to be
found in greater abundance in the Duncan Smith camp. One member of the shadow Cabinet, who recently exchanged his allegiance from Portillo to Duncan Smith, thinks that 'it is better to be right in opposition than wrong in government'. A former Tory Cabinet minister told me that 'Europe is the great issue of our time. It is bigger than the Tory party. It would be wrong to surrender on Europe to save the Tories.'
This kind of approach — that principled opposition is better than unprincipled government — was adopted by the Labour Left throughout the 1980s. It has the merit of being honourable and marvellously consistent. But it condemns the Conservative party to a bleak future as an arid little debating society. For the great majority of ordinary members of the Conservative party, feet firmly placed on the ground, the key question is which of the two candidates presents the best opportunity of averting that catastrophe and offering wise, sound, pragmatic leadership.
The answer is as clear as mud. On the one hand Ken Clarke resonates moderation and good. sensible government. It would be much easier for Clarke than his opponent to convey to the electorate that the Conservative party has regained its sanity. But the most disappointing thing about his campaign — something that has driven his supporters to despair — has been his failure to speak a more emollient language to the Eurosceptic Right. There may still be time. But at this stage, supposing the polls arc to be believed (and last weekend's poll in the Sunday Telegraph suggesting a 70!30 majority for IDS looks badly flawed). a Duncan Smith win looks much the most likely outcome.
Duncan Smith's great challenge will be to stretch across the Conservative divide. He must brace himself to disappoint some of his core supporters — Bernard Jenkin, Bill Cash, Julian Brazier — who have been loyal to him from the start. He must give senior jobs to supporters of Kenneth Clarke and Michael Portillo. He must be leader of the whole party and not merely a faction of it. So far the signs have been encouraging. Starting with his campaign launch in Bradford, Duncan Smith has made a better fist of widening his appeal than has Ken Clarke. Neil Kinnock came from the Labour Left. In the end that made it easier for him to move his party back to the mainstream: and so it may prove with Duncan Smith.
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