Alan Mak
Peterhouse

First published in the Daily Mail, 4 September 2001

The contenders in the Conservative leadership race should be careful. Any more open hostility between the two camps, and come mid-September, whoever becomes leader, the only real winners will be the Tories’ opponents.

As Clarke and IDS trade insults behind the scenes, and argue about mongrel races, and Europe – again – the usual suspects Thatcher, Major, Tebbit, and co. threaten to plunge the Tories into a bloody civil war – again. Bitter recriminations about who was offered what job, and who was to blame for things that happened long ago, together with the Edgar Griffin saga, have allowed Millbank apparatchiks to rub their hands with glee. Not only has the government, led, temporarily (we pray), by two jags Prescott whilst the PM is off collecting Blair miles, been spared the necessary front page roastings for their shortcomings, and staying suspiciously silent on issues such as the GCSE standards débâcle, Macedonia, the teacher crisis, the IRA in Columbia, or the renewed Foot and Mouth threats, but the Tories are staging their own silly season pantomime.

Clarke and Duncan Smith should use the media’s interest in the leadership contest to the Tories’ advantage. They must seize this opportunity to demonstrate to the six million voters who have deserted them since 1992, and the 20 million who stayed away in June, that the Party has new ideas, fresh faces and a different outlook. Party members, too, must realise that the real enemy is the failing New Labour government, and not each other. The Party is in the shop window, and it cannot afford to disappoint the British public, who are now starting to regret electing a government that promised so much yet has delivered so little. This is an excellent opportunity to show voters that the Conservatives are ready to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. The party must show a genuine desire to welcome ethnic minorities and attract apathetic younger voters, who have become increasingly alienated by the Tories’ image of being the nasty, greedy, bigoted party, whilst also re-connecting with Middle England voters who will be in the vanguard of any Tory revival. The Party must try to look more like the country that it wants to lead, but not at the expense of our traditional values and ideals, and thus it should not jump on New Labour’s politically-correct bandwagon of using all-women shortlists or pandering to the liberal press.

The Conservative Party that I know is not inherently nasty, greedy nor bigoted. The problem is that the tiny minority who are walking clichés tend to make more noise than their moderate counterparts. The mainstream majority of Conservatives have been shouted down by a hardcore cabal of troublemakers and relics. Whoever becomes leader must ensure the extremist troublemakers make less trouble, and ensure that the true spirit and values of our Party can be presented to the British people. If the Tories want to be seen as a credible, moderate government in waiting, they have to start acting like one – before it’s too late.

Whilst the pollsters and bookies certainly view a Clarke victory as the Tories’ quickest ticket back to power, IDS remains the darling of the grassroots, most of whom are over 60. Clarke, the cigar-puffing, jazz-listening, beer-swilling bad boy of the Tory Left, has built up a considerable fan base amongst many MPs, councillors, grandees, and Conservative Future’s younger members, and remains the public’s firm choice for leader. Given that older Tory members dominate at every level of the Party, tend to be more right-wing than their MPs, and will vote accordingly, the Daily Telegraph seems to be right in predicting an IDS win by a margin of around three-to-one. However, as Florida shows, it’s never over until the second recount. So those paid-up members lucky enough to receive a ballot paper should not vote for Duncan Smith simply because he is not Ken Clarke, nor because they see IDS as the most likely standard-bearer of the Thatcherite policies they yearn for. Duncan Smith is not himself a racist nor a xenophobe, but it is almost certain that those that are in the Party will vote for him by default. On the contrary, Duncan Smith is a decent, straight-talking, principled man, who would certainly unite the Tories around a sensible and tolerant Eurosceptic base. His desire to make the party more inclusive and his plans for school credits, public service reforms and an anti-Lib Dem unit at Central Office are laudable. But, alas, a William Hague-like follicle count, no previous ministerial experience, and an un-Hague-like lack of despatch box dominance mean Duncan Smith’s chances of beating Blair, the slick, spin-king big-business suck-up, in the long run are remote.

Clarke remains the big beast who can expose New Labour’s failures, and win the trust of the British people. That’s why Labour fear him. For the average Tory member, like myself, Clarke’s European views are hard to stomach, yet they are not necessarily fatally divisive, and regularly misrepresented. Like the majority of his party, Clarke is opposed to the Nice Treaty, greater EU federalisation and the Euro army. He wants to retain the UK’s vetoes on tax, public spending and border controls, reform CAP and rid the EU of excess bureaucracy. Clarke is pro-euro, but would allow his MPs a free vote if, and when, Blair has the courage to ask Gordon Brown and Alasdair Campbell to call a referendum. Clarke comes with the political baggage that can be expected of a man was a Minister throughout our last 18 years in government. He would not be my natural choice for leader, not least because of his pro-euro stance, but luckily, Clarke is not a single-issue politician, and he realises that the Tories cannot allow themselves to become a single-issue party.

Reassuringly perhaps, a Conservative is guaranteed to win when the result is declared on 12 September – in case there were any doubters. And there have been some. At the same time, the huge task of winning the next General Election also starts. Conservatives must stop fighting each other for petty ideological gains, and fight New Labour and their Lib Dem friends, for no less than the future of our country is at stake. It is important for our democracy that a man who appeals to the masses and who can take the Conservatives back to power is elected leader, not one whose views appeal largely to the members’ own instincts. True Blues should note that, in future General Elections, two significant groups of people will be casting votes. One group will be Tory members, around 335,000 strong, most of whom will vote Tory even if they don’t like the Tory leader. The other group consists of around 40 million other people, most of whom might vote Tory if they liked the new Tory leader. Only one of these groups will actually decide the outcome of the next General Elections.

Let’s hope that the Tory faithful realise which group that is, and vote for the man most likely to win their support, and lead us back to power.