Clarke for the high-jump

Dominic Grieve’s fate as shadow Home Secretary was sealed by a lunch at News International headquarters in Wapping. Grieve went to lunch with various Sun executives and rather than talking tough on crime he laid into the paper for how it covered the issue, claiming that it stoked fear of crime. The word then came back to Tory high command, via Andy Coulson, that the paper would not endorse the Tories as long as Grieve remained in that job. He was duly replaced by Chris Grayling in the ‘pub-ready reshuffle’ of January 2009 after less than a year in the job.

So one can only imagine how Downing Street feels about this morning’s edition of The Sun. It starts with the front page headline: ‘Clarke’s a danger to women…He must go’. It then carries on inside with a red-hot leader which declares that ‘Labour is now tougher on crime than our Tory-led government’ and demands that Cameron sack his justice secretary.

If this damage was not enough, Tory high command also worry that Clarke will have further dented the party’s standing with women. One of the few dark spots of the May elections for the Tories was that the party underperformed with women — and there’s real concern that this incident will have exacerbated the party’s women troubles. Clarke’s performance on Question Time tonight will be watched very carefully by the party leadership.