Gav's View

The 6 December has rarely been so important. This year, the 6th of December could mean a separation of the “most successful political party in the West” into a pro-Clarke party and an anti-Clarke party.

It is hard to see how the majority of members could reconcile having a Liberal Democrat (Ken Clarke) as party leader. People join political parties because they believe in the ideology of the party and the party leader personifies that ideology. I believe that Ken’s ideology is so far removed from that of the grass roots members, especially on the important topic of Europe, that a massive shift in membership loyalty would be inevitable.

David Davis remains the favourite and, despite what the BBC would have us believe, Ken Clarke is not the most popular in the rank and file of the party. People voted for IDS last time despite having never heard of him to avoid that prospect, so to suggest that now, given a likely excellent alternative, David Davis would not win with the membership, I hope, is fanciful.

Of course if the parliamentary party saddles us with a choice of Malcolm Rifkind or Ken Clarke then there will be serious membership repurcussions, but I doubt that will happen.

The most likely result, I expect, is that David Davis and one other will be selected for the membership to vote on. If the membership is offered David Cameron and David Davis, the choice becomes more interesting, but any other combination of David Davis and another should have a predictably pro-Davis result.

I have published this now, so you will be able to check my rather brave assertions on the 6th!

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EUssr, Politics

This entry was posted on Friday, September 30th, 2005 at 8:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.