The year of the cad

Now that former Central Office favourite Mark Clarke has been banned for life from the Conservative party, he could pursue a career in copy-writing. He seems to have a twisted aptitude for that sort of thing. When leading the Tories’ general election RoadTrip 2015 of young activists, many of them peachy girls, Mr Clarke was said to have had the slogan ‘Isolate, inebriate and penetrate’. Though he denies the bon mot, his approach was apparently wildly successful — which is more than can be said for his attempts to land a parliamentary seat.

Several women, including at least one serving cabinet minister, fell for this plausible smarmer over the years. Mr Clarke called to mind the character played by 1960s film actor Leslie Phillips, who greeted women with the words ‘Well, hello — ding dong.’ Fleet Street, deliriously alighting on Mr Clarke’s ‘Tatler Tory’ moniker, has run pages of copy about him under headlines about ‘Sexminster’. The party of Macmillan and Thatcher, meanwhile, has not had coverage like this since the days of Miss Whiplash, Bienvenida Buck and the cravat-wearing Alan Clark, who bagged not only a mistress but also her two daughters.

Only pure-minded folk such as tabloid editors will be surprised that a political party’s youth wing, in this case RoadTrip 2015, involved rather more bedhopping than doorstepping. Envelopes were not the only things being stuffed. What else are youth wings for? Some of today’s party bigshots joined the Young Conservatives in the 1970s chiefly in the hope of some heavy petting, as it used to be called.

Putting aside more serious suggestions about Mr Clarke concerning blackmail and the bullying of a suicidal young man, he comes across — and here is a word RoadTrippers might scarcely know — as a cad.