Chris Patten: The young contender with a warning for Britain and America from 'Old Europe'

The EU Commissioner for External Affairs and Oxford Chancellorship challenger

The European Union external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, admits that his campaign to become elected as chancellor of Oxford University this week has one Achilles' heel: his age. Perhaps only at Oxford could the former Tory cabinet minister and governor of Hong Kong be seen as too young for the job at 58.

The worry is that, because a sitting chancellor cannot be forcibly retired, Mr Patten might follow the example of the Conservative prime minister he once served, and go on and on. In his office on the 15th floor of the glass-fronted Charlemagne building in Brussels, Mr Patten has plainly been giving this some thought. "I don't regard Oxford as a job for life," he says. "This isn't the same a selecting the Dalai Lama and I would only want to do the job as long as I had the energy to do it."

How long would that be, 10 or 15 years? Mr Patten is proud of the fact that, unlike rivals for the Oxford chancellorship, his campaign has eschewed spin doctors and, as his answer shows, he has no need of one. "I think that [question] is presuming on the Almighty," he says. "There are some people who are extremely energetic in their early seventies and there are some who are less so." Simultaneously he has avoided being pinned down, while alluding to his medical history (he suffered an angina attack a decade ago in Hong Kong after a game of tennis but has since been in rude health, despite a punishing travel schedule).

There has been a spate of Patten interventions on higher education (he is already chancellor of Newcastle University) but the commissioner says he doesn't know enough about Bristol University's push to favour students from deprived backgrounds to condone or criticise it. Ability must not come second in any selection process, he believes, but he also thinks that higher education must try to reverse the "appalling figures for the reduction in the proportion of kids from the lower social classes going to university". He adds that, when he went up to Balliol in 1962, Oxbridge "was about two-thirds state school to one-third independent. One result of the sack of the grammar schools, the direct grant schools and the abolition of the assisted places scheme is that the figure is now about 50:50." Whether he wins or loses in Oxford at the end of this week, Mr Patten will quit Brussels and leave politics next year when his term ends. Iraq has, to say the least, cast a shadow over the job.

Back from visits to Washington and the Middle East, Mr Patten acknowledges that Iraq has blown apart Europe's ambitions to be a global player. Over sandwiches and a glass of white wine in his spacious modern office, he says: "I think this has been the worst period for those of us who would like to see Europe working more effectively together internationally since I can remember. The handling of Iraq has been seriously damaging." He thinks all the big players – Tony Blair included - have misbehaved and says he was angered by the way that Eastern European countries that are due to join the EU next year were asked to endorse Anglo-Spanish support for the US. "Dragging or strong-arming enlargement candidates into our debates over Iraq has been extremely unhelpful and unfair to them." Asked specifically about Mr Blair, the commissioner says: "I don't think anybody would defend the way they handled that."

Mr Patten believes that war is inevitable and he is already thinking ahead to the post-Saddam scenario. "Do I hope that we can avoid a war in Iraq? Yes. Do I believe that we will? No. Do I think that war will be short-lived and successful? Of course. Do I think that the region will face a long period of instability and scratchiness about the Western world? Yes." All very interesting, a Pentagon hawk may say, but what does it matter what the European Commission thinks? The answer to that is that Mr Patten manages Europe's aid budget for reconstruction and nation-building. In the Balkans and Afghanistan, Europe's chequebook proved to be an effective form of "soft power".

In Afghanistan, the Commission and the member states pledged €830m (£570m) in reconstruction and humanitarian assistance and spent €750m, with €275m coming from the Commission alone. But, as the commissioner points out, in both cases there was political consensus or a UN mandate "either before or after the military action".

Mr Patten says pointedly: "How easy or difficult will it be in Iraq if the member states are divided about the military action and there is no UN mandate or authority? If, after the military conflict and Iraq is being run by an American general or an American general and a civilian authority, how easy or difficult will I find it to go to the [European] Parliament and get them to vote large funds for reconstruction assistance? You only have to pose the question to know what a no-brainer it is."

This is not political stance against war, but practical politics. Mr Patten is worried that the US and Britain will go it alone, then expect the EU to pick up the pieces. He makes clear that, under such circumstances, the question of EU aid will not even be posed. "One thing I'm reluctant to do is embark on suicide missions. The Germans pay for 25 per cent of the community budget. We know what German opinion is and I am a democrat."

If Mr Patten is critical of European leaders, those of the US are hardly exempt from his tongue. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's division of old and new Europe, he thinks, was "unwise". "There isn't an old and a new Europe and I hope there isn't an old and a new America because I have to say I was very keen on the old America," he says.

Mr Patten believes things might have been very different had the Democrats clinched more disputed votes in Florida and won the last presidential election. "I don't believe that America has changed fundamentally. I don't believe that there has been a sea-change in US public opinion despite the energetic activities of Fox News," he says. "Clearly the born-again Christian movement in the US is politically very influential. I think it is wrong to talk about fundamentalism as if if were solely an Islamic phenomenon. I think that alienation touches every great religion."

Mr Blair's stance on Iraq, Mr Patten believes, has been "brave" but has complicated his ambitions to be a leading player in Europe. Britain will, he says, need to show "if there is a war, after the war, that we're being listened to on the Middle East and on other regional issues". And the Prime Minister needs to dismiss the idea that this "is the first step in a route march through the Middle East" to match George Bush's vision of an axis of evil.

Mr Patten does not criticise Iain Duncan Smith for backing the government line on Iraq, although his sympathies seem to be with other former Tory colleagues. Analogies with the 1930s are "ignorant and ridiculous", he says, and a cursory glance at the domestic debate shows that there is no divide between "brave non-appeasers on the one hand" and "wimps on the other". He cites the position of the former Conservative chancellor Kenneth Clarke, who is critical of Mr Blair's approach. "Is Ken Clarke one of nature's wimps?" says Mr Patten, "Give me a break."

As for the Tory party more generally, Mr Patten affects surprise that his recent observation that it is "in a mess" caused a stir. "If I was to tell you that the Conservative Party wasn't in a mess would you think that I was a) lying b) lived on Mars?" He neither endorses Mr Duncan Smith nor calls on him to quit but wades into the row over his purge of so-called modernisers at Conservative Central Office. "We have just had this fight between politicians who plainly don't, at the moment, command huge public sympathy or attention, let alone knowledge, over doubtless admirable officials nobody has ever heard of."

He adds: "Is it conceivable that, when I was chairman of the Conservative Party, John Major [who was prime minister and party leader] would have changed the entire top management of [Conservative] Central Office without letting me know? I think the question answers itself. These problems look to me as though they are rather self-created." For a man who has devoted some years of hard and effective work to the cause of Europe's foreign policy and many more to that of centre-left Conservatism, Mr Patten is surveying a scene of some devastation. The way back for his brand of Tory party looks long and hard.

As for the task of reassembling Europe's cohesion on foreign policy, Mr Patten says that, at the risk of sounding "like a marriage guidance counsellor", the best he can suggest is a "good deal of magnanimity all round." No wonder that, from his 15th-floor eyrie of the Charlemagne building, the dreaming spires of Oxford look attractive.