04.07.2001

Tory move to centre?

"The Tories have always understood that their first aim is power," writes John Casey in The Daily Telegraph (June 26). He goes on: "This does not mean that they have no principles; just that principles in politics are not a blueprint, but a starting point. They reinvented themselves in the 19th century when they agreed to catholic emancipation, abolished the corn laws and supported reduced labour hours. The party of imperialism, as built by Disraeli, later liquidated the empire under Macmillan."

The article was written in support of the leadership campaign of Michael Portillo, who has clearly been observing the art of presentation, as practised by Millbank, in order to put himself at the head of "a new Conservatism for a new age". But what Casey writes in order to justify Portillo's new range of 'caring, inclusive' Tory policies could equally well serve as a reason for supporting his Europhile rival, Kenneth Clarke.

Power has indeed always been the "first aim" of the Tories - or at least of the hundreds of thousands of would-be councillors, MPs, state bureaucrats and government ministers who have joined its ranks throughout the 20th century, when it was the preferred party of the bourgeoisie, the main political instrument of British capital. So, as Casey so diplomatically observes, "principle" has usually been a secondary question for the Conservative Party.

That is why the rightwing, seemingly intransigent bunch of hard-line Eurosceptics who dominate the parliamentary party may well be about to select a pro-euro member of the Tory left as one of the two candidates to be placed on the all-membership ballot to elect a new leader. Why, despite the fact that four years ago William Hague won his stage-managed party referendum ruling out membership of the European single currency until the end of the next parliament with a whopping 85% majority, the Tory rank and file may well plump for a leader who proposes to turn that policy on its head. According to opinion polls, Clarke is actually the favourite amongst the Tory membership of the five announced leadership candidates.

While Portillo has correctly identified the fact that the Conservatives are lagging behind on the Blairite-dominated, politically correct consensus around a redefined British ideology, it is Clarke who poses point blank the central issue of policy - the crying need of big British capital for ever closer European integration generally and membership of the euro in particular. Should the Tories continue to shun what the most dynamic sections of capital view as a top priority, this would effectively confine them to the margins of British politics and accelerate the shift by significant business elements towards New Labour.

This would surely continue to be reflected in election results, allowing Clarke to claim that he alone can rebuild the Conservative Party into a force that can once again challenge for the power craved by so many. In his statement announcing his candidature, he said of the Tories' attitude to the EU: "Our official policy at the general election was that Conservatives favoured enlarging the union but opposed the Treaty of Nice, which paves the way for enlargement. We opposed the extension of qualified majority voting to any new subject, however trivial. We were hostile to the European rapid reaction force. We demanded that our parliament should be able to overturn judgements of the European Court whenever we disagreed with the court's ruling on our treaty obligations.

"These policies are difficult to reconcile with Britain's continued membership of the European Union. When I am leader, these will not be the official policies of the party.

"The Conservatives should stop talking to themselves about Europe and start talking to the electorate about the things that matter to them. Most leading Conservatives have immediately accepted the need to develop credible and distinctive policies on the future of the public services and the health service in particular. The lack of such policies was the biggest single cause of our defeat."

Turning to the paradox of a Europhile heading a parliamentary party dominated by Eurosceptics, Clarke had this to say in a subsequent interview: "How do we handle the fact that I'm still more pro-European than the people I am going to lead? Let us accept some freedom of speech and freedom of vote within the shadow cabinet itself. It won't shock the public. They know we disagree" (The Sunday Telegraph July 1).

The first thing that strikes me about this is that the left could well take a leaf out of Clarke's book when it comes to openly debating our differences! But of course for Clarke this was meant as a reassurance, the only way he could persuade his Eurosceptic colleagues to do the necessary.

The day after his announcement, right on cue, support from that quarter started to appear. For example, a letter from Lady Olga Maitland, who wrote: "As a known Eurosceptic, I have publicly declared my support for Kenneth Clarke as Tory leader because in three elections I have seen our vote collapse" (The Daily Telegraph June 27).

Of course most of the press have picked up on the fact that Clarke had delayed the announcement of his candidacy because he was out of the country. While his rivals were busily mounting their campaigns, he was in Ho Chi Minh City helping to market cigarettes. British-American Tobacco employs him as part-time deputy chairman on a reported salary of £100,000 a year plus expenses.

For his enemies of all hues this was an opportunity too good to be missed. For many it seemed as though selling cigarettes to the Vietnamese was a far worse crime than dropping napalm on them. According to Tony Parsons, writing in The Mirror, "If Ken Clarke is a decent bloke, bring back Margaret Thatcher. Clarke not only looks like a pig. He acts like one too" (July 2).

Others went on red alert to keep out this "Europhile extremist", as he was dubbed by the Bruges Group (honorary president: Thatcher herself). This anti-EU pressure group loudly demanded that the Conservative Party should permanently rule out entry into the euro and "renegotiate" Britain's whole relationship with the EU.

Portillo himself has up to now come over as a Eurosceptic with the best of them. However, given his chameleon-like conversion to all things moderate during his period of parliamentary exile, it would hardly be a surprise if he began to take a more pragmatic approach. Perhaps we saw the first sign of this during the June 25 Commons debate on the queen's speech. He said: "The Conservative Party learnt during the election that Britain should have its own currency, but we also learnt that, for now, the issue is not uppermost in the minds of most people."

Instead the Tories should concentrate on the issues they were really concerned about: "The Conservative Party needs to show that it is passionate about the way our children are taught, the medical care our families receive, people struggling with public transport and people's fear of crime "¦ If elected leader, I would want the frontbench team to immerse itself in learning more about the difficulties faced by teachers, doctors and nurses."

To show he meant it Portillo spent a day later that week at an inner-city school in south London - sitting in on lessons, singing in assembly and eating a school meal. Mind you, he had worked three whole shifts as a hospital porter before being re-elected to the Commons in 1999. His front bench team would apparently be expected to follow suit.

An interesting insight into the new, politically correct Portillo has been given by the journalist Simon Walters in his new book Tory wars. Walters claims that in the aftermath of the Macpherson report Portillo tried to persuade William Hague to change a section of his speech attacking the "liberal elite". Portillo wanted "leftwing elite" instead. He also wanted Hague to disown a speech by Margaret Thatcher, who had railed against the term 'multicultural society'. Clearly Portillo believes the "new Conservatism" should not only be perceived as the zealous protector of public services, but the very epitome of liberal multiculturalism.

But he is carrying one onerous handicap: his homosexuality, which does not go down too well amongst the bulk of older Tories, to put it mildly. Section 28 delighted them. Here was the revenge of the Thatcherite 1980s on the permissive 1960s. Unfortunately for Portillo, the average age of the Tory internal electorate is well over 60. This will surely work against him, since, according to opinion polls, he is half as popular among people over 55 as those between 20 and 55.

It seems, as we go to press, that there will be no further nominations for the leadership before the July 5 deadline, which means that in the first ballot of Tory MPs, to be held on July 10, the names of Michael Ancram, Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis will stand alongside those of Clarke and Portillo. The 166 Tory MPs will hold a series of votes, perhaps over several weeks, eliminating the lowest placed candidate in each ballot, until only two remain. These two will go to a full election of the 300,000 or so Tory members, probably in September.

The man who could keep Clarke off the final ballot paper and thus make Portillo's victory more likely is Iain Duncan Smith, an arch-Eurosceptic who believes that under Thatcher the Tories "gave us back our self-respect". Last weekend, Portillo easily had the biggest support among MPs, with 32 having come out publicly for him. But he is likely to pick up around a third of the votes of his parliamentary colleagues on July 10. Clarke was said to have the confirmed support of only about 16 MPs - down on the 20 who stated they were backing Duncan Smith in the first ballot. Ancram and Davis had around 10 firm supporters each.

This 'electoral college' system is patently undemocratic, in that the mass of members might be denied the opportunity to cast their vote for the man they actually want: a poll of 181 local party officials found that 30.4% backed Clarke, as against 23.2% for Portillo (The Independent June 30). Yet there has been talk of tactical voting by anti-Clarke Tory MPs, with some Portillo supporters judging that their man is sure to top the MPs' ballot and voting instead for Duncan Smith.

Equally though, some of those on the left of the party who declared for Portillo before Clarke threw his hat in the ring may now switch to the former chancellor.

The other two candidates appear to have little chance. They are both in their separate ways representatives of the image of the old Tory Party that Portillo is so desperate to shed. David Davis, son of a single mother, was raised on a council estate. He seems to pride himself in the kind of reactionary prejudices espoused by plebeian bigots. Referring to cuisine other than traditional English, he said: "I'm a meat and potatoes man. I don't like all that poncey muck" (The Daily Telegraph June 23).

"We need a civilised society," Davis continued. "I agree with Cecil Rhodes that the first prize in the lottery of life is to be born an Englishman." Although he claimed that, "Being British is nothing to do with the colour of your skin", he thinks his friend, John Townend, was "misrepresented" over his comments that Britain was becoming "a mongrel race". He wants to rule out the single currency "for the foreseeable future" - ie, permanently. "And why don't we have private sector hospitals offering healthcare free at the point of delivery?" (ie, to subscribers to government-established medical savings accounts). Nothing to do with NHS privatisation, of course.

Michael Ancram has a background which is diametrically opposed to that of Davis. He is an old-fashioned Tory aristocrat - an earl who uses his title as a surname. He is heir to the expansive estates of his father, the 12th Marquess of Lothian, including 'family seats' of Melbourne Hall in Derbyshire and a 20,000-acre stately home near Jedburgh.

So the real fight to rescue the Conservative Party is between Portillo and Clarke. Either way, Tony Blair's drive towards the single currency has been given a big boost by Clarke's intervention. The attempt to shift the Conservative Party to the centre ground will have its effects on British politics as a whole, making New Labour's pro-euro message easier to put across .

Alan Fox