Peter Oborne

It could all come down to one speech

Peter Oborne says that the coming Blackpool conference marks the first time in 42 years that a platform performance is likely to be decisive in choosing the leader of the Conservative party

The annual party conference has been the occasion of the destruction of a Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith, within very recent history. But more than 40 years have passed since a leader was last created at a conference. That was back in 1963, also in Blackpool. Representatives had already gathered when news came through that the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, was severely ill and had determined to stand down. It was far too late to bring events to a halt. The conference went on but ceased to be the well-ordered and deferential affair beloved of party managers. On the contrary, as Quintin Hogg at once spotted, this was a hustings. Hogg had recently returned from the United States where he had made a study of the techniques pioneered by John F. Kennedy’s Democrats. He resolved to put them into practice. Badges bearing the emblem ‘Q’ suddenly appeared on the floor, while he used his conference speech to announce, with a flourish, his candidacy.

When he stood up to speak, Quintin Hogg was arguably the favourite to win the leadership. He was certainly Macmillan’s chosen candidate, and the retiring Prime Minister’s views carried weight. By the time Hogg finished speaking, his chance was gone. He got his tone wrong by appearing too vulgar and ostentatiously ambitious. Rab Butler, the other front-runner, who was asked to stand in for the absent Macmillan, suffered the opposite problem. Anthony Howard, Butler’s biographer, records that his delivery was ‘flat and uninspiring’. By the time he sat down, his chance of becoming Tory leader had been irreparably damaged. Only one speaker emerged with his reputation enhanced from the confusion produced by Harold Macmillan’s sensational announcement. This was the Earl of Home. When he stood up to speak he was not regarded as a serious candidate. He told friends that he would offer ‘a week’s salmon-fishing on his Scottish estate’ to anyone who spotted even the whiff of a leadership bid hidden in his oratory.

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