Ken Clarke’s political career has had the resilience of a cockroach, but even
he now seems to be cracking. Tim Montgomerie has shot a vicious
broadside at Clarke’s dated politics in today’s Mail. And Clarke, for his part, has given an interview to the Telegraph, where he gives a convincing impression of a man completely out of touch. Clarke
concedes (just) that the ECHR needs reform, but he defends its supreme jurisdiction:
‘Some people are very angry [about prisoner voting], but we should be able to resolve that. The jurisdiction of the [European] court remains the fraught issue. I don’t see how we can say that we don’t obey courts if we don’t want to. It would be pretty startling if a British government introduced a motion or Bill which said: ‘let’s break the law’.”
Clarke’s comments about Middle England are more damaging. He says:
“I don’t think Middle England has quite taken on board the scale of the problem. That will emerge as the cuts start coming home.”
Rather like Lord Young’s recent gaffe, Clarke is telling one of those truths that should go unsaid. Lecturing Middle England about its ignorance, when it clearly feels staitened under the weight of inflation and taxation, is indicative of the arrogance which has always afflicted Clarke. He’s also made a glaring tactical error. The coalition has hounded the ‘deficit deniers’ and it’s a beautiful and simple tactic, isolating Labour from mainstream reality and divorcing its leadership from credibility. By dismissing the bulk of the electorate as clueless (and therefore sympathetic to Labour’s destitute ideology), Clarke undoes George Osborne’s delicate strategy. Small wonder Labour is making the most it.
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