At the worst moment in Labour party fortunes, some point in the mid-1980s, a Labour politician is said to have emerged from yet another resounding election defeat unrepentant, declaring: there must be no compromise with the electorate.
There was something admirable about this remark. The politician who uttered the phrase had doubtless entered politics to espouse the causes he or she passionately believed in — socialism in one country, nuclear disarmament, ownership of the means of production, etc. The fact that the complacent and inert masses of the British people refused to entertain these Marxist insights was no reason to think again.
This state of mind was not conducive to political success. There are analogies with the Conservative party since its landslide defeat in 1997. In the various leadership elections that have taken place since, the Conservative party has made it an iron rule to choose the candidate who had most appeal among party members rather than the despised general population.
In this year’s election, the Conservatives find themselves in the same predicament, only more so. The ICM poll carried out for Newsnight on Monday, whose findings were largely confirmed by Populus in the following day’s Times, was unequivocal and devastating. When ordinary voters were asked who they would prefer to see as Tory leader, some 40 per cent plumped for Kenneth Clarke. The rest of the field was nowhere. David Davis, the bookmakers’ favourite, scraped 10 per cent while David Cameron managed 4 per cent. David Willetts achieved 2 per cent, equivalent to a single percentage point for each of his two brains or, viewed from a slightly different perspective, half a per cent for each cranial lobe.
Earlier this week I attended one of the dinners which Stuart Wheeler, the Tory donor, is hosting for each of the Tory candidates, with the insouciant exception of Ken Clarke, who turned him down.
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