Cameron is still the best option

If not Dave, then who? The parlour game that might get serious

28 July 2007

It is horrible to imagine. It would be a tragedy, for party and country. Even contemplating it seems lurid and, given recent events, deeply mischievous. It is certainly not something for loyal Tories to discuss in public. But, in their darker moments, few Conservative politicians will have not asked themselves the question in the past turbulent week: if David Cameron were to be run over by a bus tomorrow, who would lead the Conservative party?

Davis’s main rival for the affections of the Tory Right would probably be Liam Fox, already being named in this week’s gossip columns as the likely contender and pin-up for Mr Cameron’s tiny group of would-be assassins. Since he became shadow defence secretary, we have heard relatively little from Dr Fox. He has made speeches on the emerging menace of Russia, the weakness of Nato in Afghanistan and energy security — all arguments that turned out to be prescient. But few yielded much personal political capital for Fox. This seems not to bother him unduly, which suggests the absence of a
leadership plan to dust down. ‘You can only presume that his ambition now lies way, way in the future,’ said one supporter from his 2005 campaign.
That said, he has a distinct and robust position which would make him a plausible contender. His speeches regularly sound a different note from the Cameroon leadership — although always under licence so to do. In a speech on Monday, he swatted aside the idea of quality of life, a favourite Cameroon theme, and focused instead on Churchill’s ‘ladder of opportunity’. This was all at Mr Cameron’s behest, part of an attempt to stop Mr Brown colonising the social mobility issue. Yet it will do Dr Fox’s status no harm to be seen as the one leading the charge on this defining issue. One modernising member of the shadow Cabinet says: ‘He is clearly positioning himself, and I would put a fiver on him getting the job. Sly little sod.’
The outside candidate is a member of the Cameron inner circle who has also managed to reach out to the grassroots, not least because of his formidable talents as a public speaker. Michael Gove has only been an
MP for two years, but he has already made his name in parliamentary combat as shadow housing minister. Meanwhile his book, Celsius 7/7, has become a set text for neocons on both sides of the Atlantic. And he is at home on the couches of television arts programmes or amusing readers of his Times column as he is denouncing what he regards as the appeasement of Muslim fundamentalists.