Every Tory leader needs a William

17 May 2006

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. He has always looked 40, but is now 45 and seems to be purged of his old demons. ‘I have given up wanting to be prime minister. I will be very happy to be foreign secretary in the next Conservative government, but political ambition is no longer what makes me happy.’ It is Hague II, a politician reborn.

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