They Lost the Plot – and Only Ken Clarke Can Find It Again Chris Patten
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Section:GDN BE PaGe:32 Edition Date:050912 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 11/9/2005 17:41 cYanmaGentaYellowblack 32 The Guardian | Monday September 12 2005 Comment&Debate They lost the plot – and only Ken Clarke can find it again Chris Patten he Conservative party appeared. But this was a leader with a doubt whether any Conservative chan- leagues had been tougher with their crit- The Conservative party got an idea into its head difference. Thatcher had been the first cellor would have been able to avoid the ics. Such a course of action would not will continue to suffer in the 1990s. It was an party leader from the right of the party deluge, which swept away the govern- have been easy. Dissent was driven by idea that helped to wreck for as long as anyone could remember. ment’s reputation for competent eco- the mad, the bad and those beyond electorally until it can its prospects, delivering Moreover, she had given the right the nomic management. ambition. It was not easy to manage. exorcise the ghost of Britain into the hands of confidence to believe that their own Black Wednesday’s chaotic financial Major was always concerned lest he Ta Labour government prejudices and opinions ran with the crisis emboldened the anti-Europeans, should push too hard and risk splitting Thatcher’s defenestration shorn of principled grain of the nation’s character and inter- who made hay as the Maastricht legisla- the party like Peel. The trouble is that strategic direction but rich in personal ests. She used a good deal of her political tion stumbled from one parliamentary once you start bargaining with extrem- rivalry. The idea was to reverse the inter- capital in the late 1980s, at Bruges and crisis to another. Conservative rebels ists, the slope opens up steeply in front national posture it had first warmly afterwards, to drag the party into a more plotted with Labour whips to damage of you. Major promoted his opponents, embraced 30 years before when it had critical posture on Europe. This issue the government at every opportunity. “the bastards” as he accurately called become a pro-European party. helped to bring her down, but her fall With their own government in retreat, them; they behaved like even bigger The 1990s saw an upsurge in the man- left behind supporters for whom any the rebels (including the party’s future bastards, leaking and plotting against ifestations and consequences of what mutiny over Europe was in effect a ges- leader Iain Duncan Smith) continued in him. He tossed out concessions on pol- we call globalisation. Money, goods, ture of pious loyalty to her memory. hot pursuit, hounding ministers and dri- icy, until our posture on Europe turned tourists and technology flatten borders. The election of John Major brought to ving policy in an ever more Eurosceptic into ineffective and even embarrassing Prosperity and security — the things No 10 the candidate who was thought to direction. The descent into shambles parody-Thatcherism. And this is the real people care about most — can only be come closest to wearing her colours. continued to the election and over- point. Conservative sceptics, anti- secured though international cooper- Maybe he was. Major was prime minister whelming defeat. Europeans, obsessives have no idea ation. Even an island nation-state such for seven years; they were (at least from Several factors fuelled the journey what to put in place of the arrangements as Britain finds that its borders are 1992 onwards) unhappy years for him downhill. The Conservative party in against which they rail, except the argu- porous when it comes to combating and they ended with a terrible defeat parliament is not on the whole terribly ment that we really know what is best drugs, crime, environmental threats, after a period (latterly) of pretty success- interested in policy, and it was probably for the rest of Europe but cannot quite illegal migration, epidemic disease, ter- ful economic management. a mistake to think that the majority describe it for the time being. rorism. It is difficult to conclude that the Major managed the Maastricht negoti- could be saved for sanity by encouraging inviolate virtues of the nation-state con- ations with great skill. But after the 1992 an open debate on Europe. The normal s a European commis- stitute the basis of sensible domestic or election campaign, when Europe was stabilising influence of the majority — sioner I was responsi- international policies at the beginning of barely mentioned, it returned as an the commonsense bottom of the party ble for relations with the 21st century. explosive issue. With a slim majority of in parliament — was largely lost in the Norway, Switzerland Why did these arguments cut so little 21, Conservative anti-Europeans, ERM disaster. Moreover, the newspa- and the rest. My con- ice with Conservatives over the last deploying all the sovereigntist argu- pers that MPs and party activists read clusion was clear. dozen or so years? Why did Conserva- ments of the superstate and the loss of urged them on to ever-greater anti- AThey enjoy all the tives deny the logical outcome of the Britain’s birthright, could achieve real European excess. enhanced sovereignty policies embraced under Margaret and damaging leverage, and they did so The Conservative party, both then that comes with staying at home while Thatcher: the erosion of state sover- straight away against the bill to ratify and since, suffered from the conse- the decisions that intimately affect their eignty and the building of a borderless Maastricht. When the bill was put to the quences of democratisation in a con- own economic life are made by their world through free trade, open econom- Commons, opponents seized on the tracting party. As membership has neighbours in Brussels. We put a diplo- ics and competition? We have to return Danish negative vote in their own refer- declined and got older, it has also matic gloss on it of course. But to enjoy to the defenestration of Thatcher, for it endum on the treaty to insist that parlia- increasingly reflected the views of the our market they have to follow our is that act above all else that explains the mentary scrutiny should be delayed. leader writers of the rightwing news- rules: rules which they do not make or dramatic disintegration of Conservatism Fatally they were heeded, and by the papers that these Conservatives read. share in making. When we enlarged the as a credible electoral force, and until we time parliamentary debate was resumed By the mid- to late 1990s it was tough European Union these outer-ring coun- Conservatives can exorcise it we shall Britain had suffered the September being a moderate pro-European Tory MP tries had to pay into the funds that we continue to suffer electorally. humiliation of ejection from the in any constituency, and wellnigh make available to help the poorer new The removal of Thatcher, a prime exchange rate mechanism. It takes little impossible for anyone with such members. I remember a Swiss negotia- minister in office, by a part of her own encouragement for most of his cabinet declared views to get selected as a par- tor telephoning me to plead that this party in the House of Commons, did not colleagues at the time to denounce the liamentary candidate. subscription should be presented as a seem at the time quite such a calamitous then-chancellor Norman Lamont’s han- Things would not have got so bad, it voluntary donation for development in act of regicide as it has subsequently dling of this and other issues. But I has been said, if Major and his col- the deprived parts of Europe, not an additional fee for access to a larger mar- ket. But we both knew the truth. De facto sovereignty or de jure? There are also some Conservatives who really want us out of Europe alto- gether. They will continue to obstruct any efforts to drag the Conservative party back into a more sensible and com- prehensible European posture. Theirs is a programme whose main achievement has been to exclude from all hope of the party leadership the man — Kenneth Clarke — most able to exercise it in a way ª likely to restore the party’s fortunes. Others are driven to Others with similar views to his are driven to the outer fringes of Conser- the outer fringes to vatism, to watch with dismay the con- watch with dismay the tinued infatuation of the party they love with a ruinous fantasy. Such a pity, not party’s infatuation to understand the new plot. with a ruinous fantasy © Chris Patten 2005. This is an extract from Not Quite the Diplomat by Chris Patten, published by Penguin, £20. To order a copy for £18 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call the º Guardian book service on 0870-836 0875 ILLUSTRATION: TIM ELLIS ry victory for Tampere, into hand luggage. The floor itself is walk”. Worried about Europe’s com- ing in front of a pile of jeans in Primark, Rzeszow, Kaunas and, strewn with mounds of crumpled cotton missioners? They’re “morons”. Fill in the Peckham, and finding a £5 pair that fit. I Bondage at indeed, Bydgoszcz! They debris, as though Mandelson’s China blanks after B and A “and you get bas- went, I fought, I endured — and now I — along with 85 other boycott has gone flops in a trice. tards”. His most unctuous ballad is called have a bargain tale to tell. Call it victim faraway places with Occasionally, after glum altercations, “Screw the share price, this is a fares consumerism: classless examination by 36,000 feet strange-sounding names company weight watchers dispatch war”.