Interview - Kenneth Clarke - Close, but no cigar

7 Jun 07
Former chancellor Kenneth Clarke has stood for the Tory leadership three times but his failure has not dampened his political activism, he tells Joseph McHugh

08 June 2007

Former chancellor Kenneth Clarke has stood for the Tory leadership three times but his failure has not dampened his political activism, he tells Joseph McHugh

Kenneth Clarke is ensconced in his Portcullis House office and deep in conversation with a fellow MP about 'the shambles' that is the Child Support Agency. They are comparing notes on their efforts to fight the forces of bureaucracy on behalf of their respective constituents, and their exasperation is clear.

It's important certainly, but as national politics goes, not exactly at the glamorous end of things. These days Clarke is an ordinary backbencher who spends his days dealing with the mundane realities of a constituency caseload.

His office, though, is testament to his high-profile political career, which culminated in a four-year stint as chancellor in the last Conservative government. In contrast to the cubby hole your average MP has to make do with, Clarke has a spacious corner office with a view of the Thames – a handsome reward for his years in the Cabinet.

It is not difficult to find – you can smell it from the other end of the corridor, thanks to his famed penchant for cigars. Sure enough, there is one gently glowing in an ashtray. Stealing a glance at his footwear, I see Clarke is also sporting a pair of his trademark Hush Puppies.

But the outfit is light grey and smart; there is no sign of the rumpled suit of political legend. Maybe it's at the drycleaners.

Two large desks are groaning under the weight of an assortment of papers and files. As we speak, a secretary in another corner of the room fields a constant stream of phone calls and faxes.

Clarke might not be in government any longer, but the jazz-loving, cricket-obsessed, real ale aficionado is still very much in demand. His schedule includes delivering the closing speech at next week's CIPFA conference in Bournemouth, where he will speak about the challenges globalisation poses to the UK economy and how public services should be funded in the future.

Clarke is often credited with putting in place the economic conditions that have led to a decade of growth and low inflation in the UK. His assessment of his successor, Gordon Brown, is mixed.

'I applaud the establishment of an independent central bank, which I would have liked to do myself, but that remains Gordon's achievement. He could persuade his prime minister, and I couldn't persuade mine. Or perhaps he didn't tell his, given the way they work together,' he jokes.

'But since 2000, he's been spending and taxing and borrowing on a fairly grand scale, and the public's chief complaint is that they can see the higher taxes, but not the value for money for all the money that's been spent.

'That is regarded as being as plain as a pikestaff by the vast majority of the public and I don't think Gordon is tackling that adequately.'

Now that the days of plenty are drawing to a close, Clarke fears the public services are not ready for the challenge when the money dries up. He argues that the injection of cash, which he acknowledges was necessary, was not accompanied by equally necessary structural reforms.

'I've always agreed in principle with what Brown and Blair used to say, which is that public services needed more money combined with structural reforms,' he says. 'But you need to encourage a wide diversity of suppliers to provide services in a competitive field in which you give more choice to the consumer. I think there has been a failure of competence. The principles are fine, but they're being delivered in such a cack-handed way they're in danger of giving reform a bad name.'

This passion for politics runs deep – Clarke first declared his intention to be an MP in front of his classmates at the local primary school in his Derbyshire pit village aged just seven.

The young Clarke, son of a colliery electrician and self-professed 'working-class boy', was academically gifted and won a place at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where his contemporaries in the Conservative club included Michael Howard, Leon Brittan and Norman Lamont.

After university, Clarke was called to the Bar, where he practised until he entered Parliament on the third attempt in 1970, winning Rushcliffe in Nottingham from Labour. When Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979 she appointed him as a junior transport minister. A stint at health followed, and in 1985 Clarke was elevated to the Cabinet, as paymaster general and minister for employment.

In 1988, he took over as health secretary, where his confrontational approach – Cabinet colleague Douglas Hurd memorably described him as 'the kind of politician who will cross a road in order to get into a fight' – and reforming zeal soon provoked industrial strife among doctors and nurses.

After Thatcher's fall in 1990 and John Major's installation as prime minister, Clarke took over at education. Following the 1992 general election, when Major scraped home with a majority of 21, he became home secretary – one of the four great offices of state.

In 1993 he succeeded Norman Lamont, who had presided over Black Wednesday the previous autumn, as chancellor of the exchequer, where he stayed until the Conservatives suffered their catastrophic defeat at the hands of Tony Blair and New Labour in 1997.

Age hasn't softened the 66-year-old's steeliness – no doubt forged in the heat of the many battles he has fought with members of his own party, most famously over his pro-Europeanism. It cost him the Tory leadership, which he stood for in 1997, 2001 and 2005. He admits to a 'lingering regret' at his failure to bag the top job, but says he was not 'traumatised by defeat'.

In the most recent contest, won by David Cameron, Clarke was knocked out in the early round. He enthusiastically backs the Cameron camp's attempts to modernise the party and says that for the first time in a decade the Conservatives have a 'seriously good chance' of winning the next election.

He even agreed to chair Cameron's Democracy Taskforce, charged with restoring trust in politics, and launched its conclusions on June 6. 'Cameron is largely doing the things I would have wanted to do. The reason we went into hopeless opposition was that we became too Right-wing and left the mainstream of British politics to the Labour Party,' he says.

Surprisingly, Clarke enthusiastically takes up the cudgels on behalf of staff in the public services, who argue they are being hamstrung by the government's obsession with targets and micromanagement from Whitehall. It is an interesting twist on his own career, when he was unafraid to risk the wrath of doctors, nurses and teachers in pursuit of reform.

Trusting the professionals has been one of the mantras of Cameron's Conservatives of late and this party grandee likes it. That's not to say he rejects the use of targets entirely, but he thinks they should be far fewer in number and reflect the core priorities of the service. 'An over-centralised and autocratic approach to reform has meant that local managers have been overloaded with prescriptive detail. There's also been a hyperactivity, with an endless flow of policy initiatives that have been inflicted on an ever more bewildered workforce. I think they've given the use of targets a very bad name.'

Of course, it is very easy for opposition parties to make grand pledges about devolving power; it is another matter to enact them in government. But Clarke points to the current policy reviews as evidence that the Conservatives under Cameron are serious about giving staff the freedom to run frontline services.

'I expect we will come out with a far more credible package of measures than we've had for a very long time,' he says. 'I think the public will feel ready for a centre-Right platform of that kind to get back to a more competent and reliable system of government.'

Ken Clarke will be speaking on 'Staying ahead of the global competition' on Thursday, June 14 at the CIPFA conference in Bournemouth

PFjun2007

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