Forlorn Ken Clarke’s face turned a worrying purple
KEN Clarke has never looked so forlorn on the Conservative benches. He was sticking to his proEU views but it was not a congenial position. His face turned a worrying purple, his bushy eyebrows crumpled.
He passed a hand over his face like a martyr to indigestion.
Some colleagues actually heckled the former Chancellor yesterday when the Commons debated the European Union referendum Bill, which will finally give those of us under the age of 57 a vote on our vassalage to Brussels.
Owen Paterson (Con, N Shropshire), although unhappy with some of the Bill’s details, called it ‘a great day, a remarkable day, giving the people of the United Kingdom a choice on who makes Britain’s laws’.
Steve Baker (Con, Wycombe), a faintly antiseptic young man who is making a name for himself with his Euroscepticism, hailed ‘a happy occasion when our party is united in supporting this Bill’. But the Tories were not quite united.
Mr Clarke said he would not support the Bill, though he would not vote against it either. He did not wish to walk through the same lobby as Alex Salmond (SNP, Gordon), who made a niggling, sarcastic speech. The more Mr Salmond speaks on this issue, the greater the ‘out’ vote may become.
The Conservative party is not, thank goodness, what it was when Ken Clarke contested Mansfield in the 1964 and 1966 general elections. He became an MP in June 1970 when a certain E. Heath was Tory leader. Who was the most Europhile Tory leader since Heath? Thatcher or Major, I’d say.
Hague, Duncan Smith, Howard and Cameron have all been more troublesome to the elbow-tilters of Brussels.
Mr Cameron did not attend yesterday’s debate. There was a rumour beforehand that he would be on the front bench but he stayed away, perhaps owing to that foolishness earlier in the week when he threatened to muzzle Eurosceptic ministers.
The debate was opened by Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary, as unexciting a piece of work as an unbuttered ham sandwich. I will not describe his speech at length as some of you later today may be operating machinery.
Mr Hammond said the Bill would ‘deliver on’ the Tories’ manifesto promise of a referendum.
Even without the preposition, ‘deliver’ is pretty revolting. With it, it becomes enough to make one scream. Mr Hammond confessed that, aged 18, he had voted in favour of the EEC but never heard anyone mention ‘ever-closer union’ at that time.
Mr Clarke told him the term had been in the small print. ‘Call me negligent but I didn’t read the treaty,’ Mr Hammond said to old Ken who – you may recall – never read the Maastricht Treaty more than a decade later.
Hilary Benn, for Labour, managed to be both Europhile and (now Labour has flipped its position) pro a referendum.
Mr Paterson, the first backbencher to speak, said that late Tory mentors John Biffen and Nicholas ridley would have been pleased with this referendum.
Bernard Jenkin (Con, Harwich) pointed out that the late Tony Benn (father of Hilary) was another Eurosceptic of historic repute. Many MPs objected to some suspected Government jiggery-pokery which will allow officialdom (but never – NEVEr! – the BBC) to spread pro-Brussels propaganda during the referendum campaign.
Kate Hoey (Lab, Vauxhall) ticked off journalists for using ‘anti-European’ as a synonym for ‘anti-EU’.
Having delivered herself of this linguistic homily, Miss Hoey proceeded to speak of the ‘dictatorship of the EU’, which only went and upset the more Brussels-gemutlich Damian Green (Con, Ashford).
Scots and Ulster MPs disapproved of holding the ballot on the same day as local elections in those territories.
The SNP was keen for 16-year-olds to be allowed to vote in the referendum. Oh, and Liam Fox (Con, N Somerset) urged Tories to remain civil to party colleagues in coming months, even if they disagreed with one another.
You might as well tell our Patterdale terriers (mother and daughter) not to try to kill each other.