How Ken Clarke’s candidacy has changed the geography of the leadership contest

Ken Clarke is going to stand for the leadership of the Conservative party. That is the hard, hot, agenda-changing news here in Westminster as the third week in August stretches to its sultry close. One word of caution must accompany this disclosure. Clarke will stand only if proposed changes to the Tory leadership rules, due to be ratified at a meeting of a ‘constitutional college’ on 27 September, are voted through. It is intended that this meeting will take the power to elect the leader away from the party membership and give it back to MPs. Ken Clarke remembers how he enjoyed a majority among his parliamentary colleagues back in 2001 but was nevertheless heavily defeated by the membership. He has told friends that he feels little enthusiasm for repeating that experience.

Tory MPs (with the exception of Clarke, who has just returned from a bird-watching holiday in East Germany’s Mecklenburg Lakes: he enjoyed the rare and privileged experience of watching a white-faced eagle) are on holiday this weekend. But the phones are buzzing from villas or gites from Toulouse to Siena just as meaningfully as if Parliament were sitting. It will be instantly acknowledged in those modish locations that the fact of the Clarke candidacy has changed the geography of the leadership contest, and created a fatal tension in rival camps.

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Ken Clarke’s late arrival on the scene is grim news for Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the only Conservative MP so far officially to announce his candidacy. Sir Malcolm did his cause much good with a weekend interview in the Sunday Telegraph. His sensible tone compared favourably with the shrill cries from some of the other candidates. Sir Malcolm has two special selling points: as a former foreign secretary he is one of the few remaining Tory MPs with experience of high office, and he had the foresight to oppose the Iraq war.