Beware the Brexit HEADBANGERS
Heartily rude, the Tories’ arch-rebel gives a very blunt warning to PM on the threat that could bring her down
THERESA MAY could be brought down as Prime Minister if she sides with Eurosceptic Tory MP ‘headbangers’ and walks away from EU negotiations with nothing, Ken Clarke has warned. He was speaking the day after flaunting his credentials as the Conservatives’ chief anti-Brexit rebel as the only Tory MP to vote against May in a Commons debate which, nominally at least, approved her timetable for breaking with Brussels.
Sunk deep in an old green armchair in his Commons office after a good lunch, it is hard to tell where the well-padded upholstery begins and the former Chancellor’s well-padded suit ends. There was no padding in the 76-year-old veteran Europhile’s defiant message to May.
He said she ‘won’t last long’ as PM if she sides with Tory Brexit cheerleaders, mocked a speech she made which ‘sent the pound crashing’ – and urged her to ‘put a wet towel’ on in future. And he claimed Chancellor Philip Hammond was ‘as pro-European’ as Clarke himself, and joked about being a new Tory ‘bastard’ – the term given by John Major to anti EU rebels who destroyed his Government 20 years ago.
Heartily rude and robust as ever, Clarke, due to stand down as an MP in 2020 after half a century in Parliament, says he will oppose Brexit to the end.
‘If I ever voted to leave the EU I would be the biggest unhung hypocrite. The idea that I should just because I was on the losing side in the referendum by a couple of per cent is nonsense,’ he says, adding with breezy contempt that ‘70 per cent supported the Iraq War at the time’.
He claims – or perhaps hopes – May, Hammond, Boris and the rest of the Cabinet merely pay lip service to the Brexit hardliners – and secretly agree with him.
‘I’ve never heard Theresa make a Eurosceptic remark. There is no majority in Parliament for the headbanger tendency. They’re cock-a-hoop but they can’t get a Commons majority. If she lets them tow her around, she won’t last long. Theresa always says how in favour of free trade she is. It’s difficult to equate that with
‘Theresa needs to be bloody difficult’
pulling out of the biggest and best-organised free trade area in the world. Her Government isn’t suddenly going to start pretending to agree with the likes of [John] Redwood, [Bill] Cash and [Bernard] Jenkin. If it does, it will be defeated.’
Laid-back, red-wine-loving jazz fan Ken and buttoned-up vicar’s daughter Theresa are chalk and cheese. Earlier this year he was caught on microphone calling her a ‘bloody difficult woman’.
Ken is happy to put it on the record. ‘She needs to be bloody difficult and sort out the warring in her Cabinet,’ he says. ‘She is a straightforward, no-nonsense Surrey Tory lady.’ (When Clarke first knew May, she lived in Wimbledon, formerly part of Surrey.) ‘That’s a compliment!’
HE GROANS at her ‘Brexit means Brexit’ mantra. ‘Better that than any more statements that make the pound crash!’ he quips, a reference to her crowd-pleasing Tory conference speech about leaving the EU that sparked a mini sterling crisis.
‘Put the wet towel on [her head], read the brief and work out what the Government is going to do,’ he says, admonishingly.
Clarke’s patronising put-downs are delivered with such cheek and charm that few take offence. Even Nigel Farage calls him a national treasure. His anti-Brexit stance has made him the target of the internet hate mob. But he won’t back down and believes Hammond will make sure May does not go down the hard Brexit route. Not least because there is a ‘risk of recession in the next two or three years’ and Brexit ‘could make things worse’.
‘Philip’s as pro-European as I am. The duty of a Chancellor is to find 101 ways of saying no to people who insist two plus two equals five. Philip will. He understands economics and is no weakling. If he just sits there and allows the economy to be wrecked on his watch, he will carry the blame. Boris is the same – not that he knows much about economic policy,’ he guffaws.
When Clarke was in Major’s Cabinet, Eurosceptic rebels such as Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith were treated as loony troublemakers, branded ‘bastards’ by Major. Today, the roles are reversed and Brussels defender Clarke is the ‘bastard’ voting against a Conservative PM.
It amuses him. ‘The one thing the bastards and I have in common is that we have strong views and don’t change them.’
But behind the bluster, he is worried. ‘If IDS is the new norm, it doesn’t bode well for the Tory Party or our country,’ he shrugs.
The grin fades; his baggy, saucer eyes look sad and tired.