Every Tory leader needs a William

William Hague tells Fraser Nelson that the Tory party has changed completely since he led it — and that the best advice he has given David Cameron is dietary

William Hague had almost cracked Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata when David Cameron called him back to front-bench politics. He has been teaching himself to play the piano since he resigned as party leader; he drank a bottle of champagne that night and woke up to find that a concerned neighbour had left him a teach-yourself book so that he could fill his time. In those five years he learnt not just how to play, but how to sail and how to make £630,000 a year advising companies and giving speeches. He has given this up to become shadow foreign secretary, and returns to front-line politics a changed man.

‘I have discovered there is a whole different way to live out there with less of the pressure and stress of political life,’ he says, stretching out on the sofa of his Westminster office.