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TERRY DIGNAN: Has there ever been a darker
hour in the history of the Conservative Party? Few here in Smith Square,
home to the party's HQ, can recall anything quite as calamitous. The search
has begun - both for an explanation of what went wrong - and for someone
to lead the party into a bright new dawn. But it means revisiting the potentially
divisive issues of Europe, taxation and the party's ability to adapt to
the modern world.
Two devastating election defeats have left the Conservative Party uncertain
about its future. Many of its MPs feel radical changes are needed. But
they can't agree on what direction the party should take. To unlock the
reasons behind the latest landslide defeat, some Conservatives say where
better to start than at Central Office where the party's campaign was planned
and put into operation.
MICHAEL HESELTINE: The strategy was to choose a
number of issues which enabled the Party to be labelled as right-wing,
hard-nosed, unsympathetic.
JOHN MAPLES MP: If we continue to be obsessed
with issues that concern us and don't concern the floating voters and we
do so in terms which appear to them to be extreme we won't win elections,
we won't gain their votes.
LAURENCE ROBERTSON MP: We really do need to be very careful
that we don't exclude the concerns of our great core support, which we've
enjoyed for so many years, I think it is important that we keep our traditional
values in the Conservative Party.
DIGNAN: The prospect of a leadership
contest is concentrating the minds of Conservative MPs on the kind of party
they want to represent. No longer will William Hague sit at a desk trying
to balance the concerns of floating voters against the party's traditional
values. He has done the decent thing.
The favourite to take over is Michael Portillo. Thinking it over, Ann
Widdecombe. A strong contender would be Iain Duncan Smith. David Davis
is being encouraged to stand. From the pro-European wing of the party,
there's Kenneth Clarke, of course. Others who are said to be tempted are
John Redwood and Andrew Lansley. In a series of ballots, Conservative MPs
will whittle down the contestants to just two - they'll go forward to the
next round, when party members will make the final choice as to who should
lead them.
But the path to power involves a detour into the past of Michael Portillo.
He has been on a personal quest for a new political credo. Gone is the
uncaring dogmatist. In his place a more tolerant Portillo, a Conservative
who values cultural and sexual diversity - and who wants to appeal beyond
the Tory core vote.
TIM YEO MP: Any leader who's going to be
successful must be prepared to take on in a much more inclusive way, the
kind of dialogue which people in the centre, the floating voters, want
to engage in and it does mean not just pleasing the readers of the Daily
Mail and the Daily Telegraph.
ALAN DUNCAN MP: I think the way for us to step
into the middle ground which the likes of Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine
quite reasonably say we need to occupy, is to look at the social agenda
more than anything else and I think the future of the Conservative Party
lies in euro-sceptic, social liberalism, but I'd put the stress on the
social liberalism.
DIGNAN: But this search for a new
kind of Conservatism fails to inspire some on the right of the party. They
fear it leads nowhere. A better guide to success for them would be a renewed
debate about how to achieve less Government and lower taxation.
ERIC FORTH MP: I'm not sure I quite understand
what this inclusive thing is, if it's not just words and where it leads
in policy terms, but I don't think that's the way forward at all. Can't
we have an adult, mature debate about whether or not the government is
actually the best agency to be running, well I don't know, anything at
all? I think we've got to get back into that debate and not be frightened
off by people talking about this nonsense about lifestyle or whatever
it is is now the trendy thing to discuss.
DIGNAN: But others fear the party
will never emerge from the shadows if it makes tax cuts a priority. They
argue the election result showed that voters no longer share the Conservatives
preoccupation with taxation.
MAPLES: Most peoples concerns was
improvement of public services and somehow they felt that you know tax
cuts would be at the expense of those services.
YEO: I think on the question
of taxation, people at the moment do not feel over taxed, except perhaps
on the issue of fuel tax where we are paying higher taxes than anywhere
less in Europe.
DIGNAN: Portillo's commitment to
lower taxation is now questioned on the right. That could give an opportunity
to, David Davis, who opted to chair the powerful Commons Public Accounts
Committee rather than join the Shadow Cabinet. It means he lacks a high
profile outside Parliament but his supporters are urging him to stand.
FORTH: I'm hoping that my friend
and colleague David Davis will offer himself as a potential leader of the
party. I think that he's shown in the past four years as Chairman of the
Public Accounts Committee that he's able to play a leading role in holding
the government to account in a number of different ways and has done that
I think very successfully. But he's also demonstrated that he's capable
of real thought about policy, about what we are and what we want to be
and about the way ahead.
DIGNAN: Those who want a more tolerant,
inclusive Conservative Party may face a battle in the coming weeks with
the forces of social authoritarianism, those politicians who stress the
importance of moral values. Their leading lights are regarded as Ann Widdecombe
and Shadow Defence Secretary Iain Duncan Smith. But some Conservatives
say the party has suffered enough from sounding tough.
DUNCAN: I think it has looked too
bossy and it's looked too nasty. I said to someone once you know it's all
very well you wanting us to appear to be once again the stupid party but
why make us the nasty party as well. There's no need for it.
YEO: We need to have someone
who looks friendly, who looks inclusive, who accepts a whole variety of
different lifestyles, doesn't make judgements about them, but does help
people enjoy the opportunities which exist. It needs to be a leader who
recognises that we've got to reach out more widely and therefore is not
simply going to say, I am going to talk about asylum seekers or the length
of prison sentences.
DIGNAN: Cue Ann Widdecombe. As
Shadow Home Secretary her tough line on asylum and law and order wowed
the party conference. But she also has strong views on marriage, abortion
and homosexuality. A little bit too strong for some of her fellow Conservative
MPs and for the euro-sceptics among them, there's another problem.
BILL CASH MP: Nobody really knows quite
where Ann Widdecombe stands on the European issue and I don't think myself
that however much she may be able to do a good job on the party conference
platform, that that would be in itself enough. I don't really see her as
a credible leader of the Conservative Party.
DIGNAN: Iain Duncan Smith's views
on Europe are less of a mystery. He's said to be sympathetic to toughening
the party's line on the single currency. Which means he could appeal to
a large section of the party, including those who believe in traditional
Conservative values on other issues.
ROBERTSON: I think the Conservative Party
does have to re-establish itself as a Conservative, as a Tory Party and
that means belief in the nation state. It means belief in the family as
a cornerstone of society and it means belief in the sound economy.
CASH: I think Iain Duncan
Smith does have incredible credibility, precisely because particularly
on the European issue, he was not associated with for example signing up
to the Maastricht Treaty.
ANDREW ROSINDELL MP: No Conservative government
that believes in the nation can ever give away control of its currency
and abolish the pound and I think we have to be clear about that, it is
a matter of principle. It's not an option for a few years and then we'll
think again later, if we keep the pound we keep our independence. So this
must be a permanent policy for the Conservative Party.
DIGNAN: There are signs of even
further restlessness over Europe. Although some are alarmed at the prospect
of re opening internal party divisions, there are those who want to find
a way to disentangle the United Kingdom from what is described as a European
federal state.
ROSINDELL: It's not a question
of just being in the existing arrangements, we have to have new arrangements
that suit Britain - the existing arrangements don't.
NIGEL EVANS MP: The Conservative Party
at Westminster is generally of the centre right but we are a broad church
and I think that if the centre right decide that right we're going to get
somebody who is seen as being very right wing or indeed a euro-sceptic
right winger and spends most of their time trying to alienate the other
side, then we are not only just going to alienate parts of the parliamentary
party but I think we are going to alienate the country as well.
DIGNAN: Kenneth Clarke would agree.
He's been here before. He knows his support for joining the euro is shared
by only a minority of Conservative MPs - although some argue he would be
the most popular choice among the voters.
MICHAEL HESELTINE: My own clear view is that the
Party having decided how to reposition itself, should look for someone
who can win and the evidence will be very clear as to who that will be
and certainly at the moment, it is self-evidently Ken Clarke, who is streets
ahead of anybody else in terms of what the public want.
CASH: I don't believe that
Kenneth Clarke would be a credible contender for a very simple reason,
that he is clearly in favour of monetary union, he has said so.
DIGNAN: But should the new Conservative
leader at Westminster, in the cause of party unity, hold out an olive branch
to pro-Europeans like Kenneth Clarke by bringing them back into the Shadow
Cabinet - at the cost of allowing them to campaign in favour of joining
the euro in a referendum.
DAMIAN GREEN MP: It would be sensible for any leader
at anytime not to set up a single policy area as a kind of qualification
test. That any sensible party in a first past the post political system
needs to be a broad church if it wants to win elections.
EVANS: Members of the Shadow Cabinet
and the Parliamentary Party are going to have to have the freedom to be
able to speak out on issues like the single currency so that there wouldn't
be a three line whip on the Parliamentary Party on that issue, we're just
going to have to be more mature about it that's all. Ken has played an
enormous role in the Conservative Party in the past and has been missed
I have to say over this parliamentary session and I just hope that we are
able to bring forward people of Ken's calibre into the Shadow Cabinet if
he so wishes to play a part.
CASH: I hear that some
people are saying that Kenneth Clarke could come back into the Shadow Cabinet
and also campaign in favour of the euro in a referendum. These things are
mutually inconsistent and it would just be a fundamental illustration of
the ridiculous position in which the Conservative Party could get itself.
DIGNAN: The Conservative Party
has started out on a new chapter in its long life in the most dismal of
circumstances. Reminders of a glorious past serve only to reinforce the
party's central dilemma - that it is a long way from finding the policies
- or the leader - to inspire the voters it needs to win back power.
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