Mr Montgomerie and his friends over at Conservative Home have got a real bee in their bonnet at the moment over the potential return to the front bench of Ken Clarke.  When not busy openly undermining the Party Chairman, Con Home seems to be repeatedly rehashing “the case against” a return to the Shadow Cabinet for one of the most formidable figures of his political generation.  I fundamentally disagree with them about Ken.  I also have to wonder at the temerity of Conservative Home to think that they can dictate who should and shouldn’t be in the Shadow Cabinet.  That is the business of nobody but the Party Leader.

Today, Con Home have yet another article about a potential return for Ken, including tiresomely predictable reservations from the likes of Tebbit and Wheeler as though they were mind blowing pieces of new evidence that might have got Woodward and Bernstein excited.   The same piece also attempts to pour cold water on a survey of grassroots opinion conducted by, you guessed it, Conservative Home, that supported the return of Clarke.  Con Home argues that Clarke is “disloyal” – which is a tad rich coming from the blog that is openly disloyal to the Party Chairman and founded by the man who advised IDS – one of the most disruptive influences to the Major Government.  The second charge is that his pro European views would make his elevation to the Shadow Cabinet unacceptable.  Of course, that second point is only the case if we adopt the same dash for ideological purity that made us unacceptable to the majority of the electorate for much of the past ten years.  Are we the broad church that made us the most phenomenal election winning machine of the 20th Century or should we be, as Montgomerie seems to wish, some kind of 21st Century version of the Jacobin Club?

Of course, whether to restore Ken Clarke to the Shadow Cabinet is entirely up to the Party Leader and this blog would not have the impertinence to push the Leader in one direction or another.  Nevertheless, there are some very persuasive and powerful arguments for a return to the front bench of Ken Clarke. 

Firstly, he remains one of our most formidable performers.  When I speak to members of the public; leaders in business; and work colleagues, most of whom are Conservative minded, they all express their support for a bigger role for Ken.  He comes over superbly on TV and on the radio; is a superb debater in the House (one of the few Parliamentarians for whom the bars still empty when he makes a speech); and has a wonderful habit of tearing apart Brown’s Government and it’s tattered claims to economic competence piece by piece.

After George Osborne, Clarke is by our most convincing voice on the economy – reminding people that we gave Gordon Brown a golden legacy, which he has fatally undermined.   When you ask the question, will the addition to our team of one of our strongest performers in the House and on the media strengthen or weaken the team the only answer is that it will be strengthen by the addition. 

Of course, the thorny issue of Europe always rears its ugly head.   But Ken is an experienced politician.  He knows that joining the Shadow Cabinet would mean toeing the Party line on every issue, including Europe.  There is no reason to suggest that he would not be prepared to do this.  What he does on the backbenches is quite different to what he would do if part of a Shadow Cabinet and bound by the collective responsibility that entails. 

Don’t forget the fundamental point that we have been making on this blog for some time – in order to win, we need to convince the British people that we are a Party of Government, genuinely ready for the challenges entailed by that.  Nobody would remind the British people of our seriousness as a Party and our ability to step into Government as much as Ken Clarke.

These are serious times.  Gordon Brown’s casual destruction of the economy is threatening the livelihoods of so many British workers and their families.  During these times, we need to utilise all of our strongest weapons.  Ken Clarke is undoubtedly one of those weapons.  It is up to us as a Party whether we put the internecine disputes of more than a decade ago to one side and go forward as a united force to victory.  The hard right ultras need to make a choice between ideological purity and Government.  I hope for the sake of the Party and the country that they choose the latter.

Related posts

• We are where we are. But where is that? (1)
• Time For All Conservatives To Back All Of The Shadow Cabinet (4)
• They still don’t get it (1)
• The times they are x changing (0)
• Stop, say sorry, move on (0)

Tags: Internal Politicking

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 5:04 pm , written by Disraeli and is filed under General Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.