Kenneth Clarke: "And what is going to happen about Brexit? I haven’t a clue."

I always liked Kenneth Clarke and am reading his autobiography. I was interested to learn that he was a working class Nottinghamshire boy. 

Understandably he thought in the 1950s that the Labour Party was hopelessly out of date. This was a common and accurate view among manual workers then as now.

I used to consider myself a left-wing Tory, despite agreeing with most of what High Tory Cambridge dons like Edward Norman, Maurice Cowling and John Casey wrote. I agreed with everything Charles Moore said until he talked about economics or attacked the EEC.

Sir Roger Scuton said Margaret Thatcher offered nothing to conservatives like him and nor did she to me. She seemed simply to be about free market economics, but I was mistaken. 

Her Toryism was not exhilarating or romantic and seemed to be the Daily Mail made flesh. She did not express or seem to feel concern for the working class, but she was a patriotic Tory of an unrefined sort. She was certainly no social conservative, but at least she was not a social liberal. Liberal Toryism is a direct descent from Edward Heath, via Cameron and Osborne (the late Frank Johnson said they sounded like upmarket wallpaper-makers) to Theresa May's and Amber Rudd's horrible left-of-centre authoritarianism.

People said that the Tories were stupid not to choose Ken Clarke as their leader and in hindsight they were, but even by 2001 I found myself wondering if there was much difference between him and Labour. But it turned out that there was a big difference over Iraq.

He deserves huge credit for being one of the few Tory MPs to vote against the whip imposed by the asinine Ian Duncan Smith and against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He was a very good Chancellor of the Exchequer, but too liberal about prison sentences as Lord Chancellor. He disapproved of Enoch Powell's views on immigration though he liked him and respected him as a parliamentarian. He said in 1996 that: 

"I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a Council Chamber in Europe."

Kenneth Clarke was the only Conservative MP in 2016 (how long this crisis is taking) to vote against the Government motion to “respect” the Brexit referendum and trigger Article 50. Charles Moore compared him to the one Roman senator who argued against making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus. (But is this accurate?)

Yet, unlike Lord Heseltine, Ken Clarke does not believe that Britain might stay in the EU despite the Brexit referendum result. 

Mr. Clarke has outlasted the lovely Sir Peter Tapsell and the loathsome Sir Gerald Kaufman and is now Father of the House of Commons. I remember when the Father of the House was the aged left-wing Labour MP George Strauss, who returned to the House in 1934 after losing his seat in 1931. 

Mr Clarke spoke on Wednesday to the parliamentary press gallery. Here are some excerpts.

“Although in a way I’m entertained by the present situation, the entertainment is rather limited. For political addicts it’s quite fascinating. But it is all rather serious and it’s more of a tragic farce than anything else. I always get asked: have you ever seen anything like this before? No, I haven’t. This is quite the maddest situation that has occurred in my political lifetime. And what is going to happen? I haven’t a clue. Anybody who believes they know where we’ll be politically in Britain in two weeks time is utterly deceiving himself or herself. When you think no more ridiculous turn of events could take place, another ridiculous turn of events does take place.”

“The traditional centre-right bloc, centre-left politics is collapsing as it is in the western world for much bigger reasons . . . and why we get Trump, Brexit, yellow jackets, Salvini, they’re all the same. It’s a deep underlying discontent, uh, that, uh, people have lost confidence in their old regular politicians.”

[But he did not examine the reasons for this, which are complex, with mass immigration being easily at the top of the list.]

“Anybody who accuses me of not being a Conservative is a lunatic. The difference between a One Nation Conservative and a Blairite Labour MP or a Liberal Democrat has always been quite nuanced.”

[This reminded me of Enoch Powell saying 'I despise the Labour Right as much as I despise the Liberals. More than that I cannot say.'] 

“Parliament, which is deadlocked, actually represents public opinion, which is deadlocked. About a third of the population are angry Leavers who are being betrayed because of bloody politicians for their own conniving reasons. About a third of the population are angry Remainers who think this is all a farce, the public were all deceived, all a mistake, and should now be reversed and we should remain. And the other third are fed up with the lot of them. I’m bored stiff with all this. Why don’t we get some sensible people who will move us on. Now that’s roughly reflected accurately in the House of Commons.”
“I don’t think either candidate believes leaving with no deal makes the slightest sense at all. Jeremy hedges it. Boris does his usual thing of changing the way he expresses it day by day. He’ll make his mind up on what he’ll actually do, regardless of what he said, if actually finds himself as prime minister.”

“I’m currently minded to step down and I’ve told my people in Nottingham that I’m not standing again. If I’ve been thrown out of the Conservative Party by then, one of the other parties may tempt me to have a run for them.”