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?

Being named Channel 4’s rising star of the year has triggered speculation that he may be a future prime minister. But, aged 39, he has plenty of future to wait for. He may be reluctant to make his move so early, and if he suspects Labour has another election victory left inside it, might be inclined to sit the next contest out. But he is an ambitious man who knows that opportunity does not knock as often as we might like.
Yet the more Tories ponder the alternatives, the clearer it becomes that there is no better option than the incumbent. Strikingly, no one I spoke to disputes this. One shadow Cabinet member told me that, should Mr Cameron be run over by a bus, ‘I’d kill the bus driver.’ The party has only just emerged from 15 years of civil war — and fear of returning to such mutinous horrors makes Mr Hague the most likely alternative. Mr Cameron’s departure, followed by a vote for two finalists to put to the grassroots members, would have a truly destructive effect: after a fourth defeat, the party would be hard pushed to repeat the good-humoured experience of the 2005 contest. As most Tories will admit, the alternative to the Boy Wonder, for all his flaws, may not be unity under any candidate but five years of chaos.

Yet if there is an election in the spring, or earlier, and Labour wins again, then the bus will not be imaginary and the parlour game will be all too real. Opposition leaders do not survive failed election attempts in modern politics. Mr Cameron may plead an exception, in that he will barely have had two years at the helm. He may just as likely conclude that there is no more he can do, and that his time would be better spent with the family to which he is so obviously devoted.
For now, this is all hypothesis: no phone lines are being installed, or lists drawn up. But a year from now, the Conservatives, to their horror, may be playing the game for real.

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