Another Fine Mess

National Review Online, July 18, 2001

When the British Conservative Party decides to make a mess of things, it does so in style. Last night, Mrs. Thatcher's tatty successors did it again. Battered, humiliated, and crushed in two successive general elections, the Tories are now identified with precisely one popular policy, their opposition to any attempt to abandon the Pound in favor of the European Union's laughable single currency, the Euro. So last night, when Conservative MPs had the task of narrowing the shortlist of candidates for the party's leadership down to two contenders, what did they do? Why, naturally they gave the most votes to former finance minister Ken Clarke, who politically, at least, is best known for one thing. He wants Britain to adopt the Euro. Now, that is a perfectly respectable, if misguided, opinion, but it is a remarkable viewpoint to be held by the challenger for the leadership of a profoundly euroskeptical party, although that, in turn, is less strange than the fact that, when the final vote is held this September, Mr. Clarke is very likely to end up the winner.

In part, of course, Ken Clarke's success is the product of desperation. The Tories are patient folk, but, after two of the biggest defeats in British electoral history, they would quite like to start winning again. Opinion polls repeatedly show that Mr. Clarke is easily the most popular Conservative in the country, despite the fact that he rejects the Conservatives' most popular policy. He combines political heft (Clarke is widely perceived as having enjoyed a successful ministerial career, although no one can quite say why) with a likeable public image. Untidy (the suits!), non-workaholic (the naps!) and rather portly (the waistline!), Mr. Clarke has perfected the English art of concealing a sharp intelligence, and no small amount of arrogance, behind a façade of shabby bonhomie. He is known to enjoy a few drinks and it is a fair guess that lean cuisine remains a mystery to him. Spectacularly (he is also a former Health Minister) Mr. Clarke also smokes, and, as Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco, he would probably like you to take up the habit as well.

Being a merchant of death, however, is not enough, by itself, to make Ken Clarke the best choice for the Tory party. When it comes to more conventionally political matters, he has shown himself to be a very conventional politician, with ideas that are very unlikely to prove much of a challenge to the Labour Party's existing dominance. Mr. Clarke came into politics in the 1960s and his attitudes stem from the orthodoxies of the compromising and vaguely defeatist Conservative Party of that era. This too is probably the source of his fixation with the EU. Back then, "Europe" was seen as a relatively prosperous, sunlit alternative to the gloom of Britain's decaying welfare state. Indeed, in those days, that is just what it was, but times have changed. Thinking in the EU has not, however, and its dirigiste economic model has now clearly run out of steam. Post-Thatcher it is the Continent that should look at the UK for economic inspiration, not the other way round.

This is a change that seems to have eluded Ken Clarke. He fails to grasp the fact that, for Britain, deeper integration within the federal European project can only mean one thing, an irrevocable return to the high-taxing, bureaucratized ways of 30 or 40 years ago. Mr. Clarke may be the most attractive of the candidates for the Tories' top job, but his failure of imagination over Europe means that he is also the most dangerous.

The GOP was faced with a similar temptation last year. John McCain offered the prospect of a landslide, but the price he asked, campaign "reform," was too much for a party that still had some principles. It was a decision made easier, of course, by the fact that, in George W. Bush, the Republicans had an alternative candidate with a reasonable chance of victory. Looking at the potential opposition to Mr. Clarke, in a party where the ranks of aspiring leaders had been thinned by electoral carnage, it is by no means sure that Britain's Conservatives have had the luxury of such a choice.

To prove this, just look at the relative success of one of Mr. Clarke's supposed rivals, the mysterious Michael Ancram, a man who had risen to obscurity as Chairman of the Tory Party. Unelectable (as a member of the hereditary aristocracy he is considered beyond the pale in Tony Blair's supposedly classless new Britain), his campaign platform consisted of two pretty daughters and one vague principle (something to do with "unity"). Nevertheless, in a sparse field it was enough. The great man got some votes, and by the end of his campaign the London Times could even talk about yet another Tory sect, the "Ancramites."

It was not to last. Ancram and the Ancramites were defeated in an earlier round of voting. Another challenger dropped out shortly thereafter, leaving two other candidates. One, Michael Portillo, a former defense minister, had been the early front-runner. Once viewed as Mrs. Thatcher's heir, Portillo, an occasionally charismatic politician, who was seen by some as a potentially exciting choice to take on Tony Blair, has, over the past few years, compounded bad luck (he was out of parliament at a crucial time) with worse tactics. A self-indulgent and very public "journey" of self-discovery designed to help him connect to a wider audience played poorly with a party that, even these days, still prefers some degree of emotional reticence. The wider audience was pretty startled too. Doubts as to what the former Thatcherite stood for were intensified by the speed of his departure from the Iron Lady's old certainties. British Conservatives are a pragmatic bunch. They understand the reason for a strategic retreat, but would, perhaps, have preferred that this one had been carried out somewhat less enthusiastically.

Unfairly, Mr. Portillo's admission a few years ago of some early homosexual relationships may also have inflicted some lasting damage, but in the end it was questions over his judgment and what he stood for that were to prove fatal. Despite a strong start, his campaign was clumsy, and, in the absence of any real evidence of his electoral pull, the old doubts returned and he was done for. He was eliminated in last night's ballot, passed on the one side by the popular appeal of Ken Clarke and, on the other, by the ideological attraction of the other remaining challenger, Iain Duncan-Smith, the most recent keeper of the Thatcherite flame.

Iain Duncan-Smith, or "IDS" as he has been dubbed by the egos of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, is an amiable former army officer and the son of a Battle of Britain hero. He is bright, well informed, and a confirmed Euroskeptic. In fact, unlike Mr. Clarke, there is no doubt that he actually supports Conservative policies. By rights, all this should make IDS the favorite for the final ballot in September (all Party members get to vote), except for one teeny-weeny problem. Many Tories worry that the undeniably retro Mr. Duncan-Smith may be completely unelectable. He is, they worry, too unknown, too old-fashioned, too uptight, and perhaps the worst offense, too bald (a no-no, allegedly, in politically sophisticated Britain). Over the next couple of months IDS will have to show that these concerns have been overdone. If he can do that, he will see off Mr. Clarke. If he cannot, Conservative Party members will face a difficult dilemma. Do they vote for Mr. Clarke, a proven vote-getter, who might win an election, but whose policy preferences run the risk of splitting the party, and enmeshing Britain in a federal Europe, or do they vote for IDS and run a high risk of a third electoral disaster, a disaster that might give Mr. Blair the mandate he needs to adopt the Euro?

IDS, I think, needs to get a move on.