The Conservatives could find that their defeat was not an unmitigated disaster

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Clarke spurns Portillo's 'dream ticket' advances

If the Conservatives handle the next few weeks with good sense, it is possible that their defeat will not be quite the unmitigated catastrophe it seemed last Thursday. That is meant literally. It was a catastrophe. But it may be mitigated by a seriousness of thought and purpose that wholly eluded most of the party after the 1997 election.

This time there are some signs that the enormity of the defeat has genuinely sunk in. But dignified as William Hague's departure was, its swiftness will make it more difficult to resist the temptation to subordinate the urgent need for a far-reaching post-mortem to the transitory excitement of a leadership contest. As Chris Patten pointed out in his interview in The Independent last weekend, the party has recovered from each defeat in the past only by means of a deep and broad re-evaluation of its strategy, of precisely the sort the party failed to carry out after 1997.

Which places a firm responsibility on the contenders for leadership, most immediately Michael Portillo, expected to be the first to announce his candidature today. Mr Portillo will start with an impressive spectrum of support from across the party. But he will need to show humility as well as confidence. As Mr Hague's most visible lieutenant in the election campaign, he cannot escape all responsibility for its doomed strategy and inept execution. That should not in itself disqualify him as a successor, but it does require him to admit that there are no quick fixes to make the Conservative Party electable, and that a lengthy and open-ended period of reflection is now required. What is the genuinely desirable balance between public and private services? What is the role of the state in this century? What can be admired as well as condemned in Europe? And so on.

That said, there are two essential requirements for any of the potential candidates. The first is to recognise frankly how far the Conservative Party's outdated obsessions have alienated it from the large majority of unpoliticised voters. Even most Tory activists, let alone those who might vote for the party, have experience, through their own social circles, of single parenthood, of drug-taking, of homosexuality. Some may be worried by the consequences of this; but even they no longer believe in a return to some some unachievable fantasy of the universal 1950s nuclear family. Lord Tebbit's typically deplorable attempt to diminish the candidature of Mr Portillo is not only indefensible; it is a desperate but wholly anachronistic attempt to keep that fantasy alive.

The mistake, however, is to think that social liberalism alone is the panacea that will end the Tory party's problems. While it is most welcome, and could undermine a government with its own streak of illiberalism, any leader, whether from the diehard right or from the pro-European left, such as Kenneth Clarke, will have to find some way of reconciling the divisions on Europe. The unity of Mr Hague's Tory party on this issue was the unity of the sect. It excluded some of the biggest and most popular figures in the party; those who had most experience of winning elections. The minimum requirement of a successful Portillo candidature ­ successful, that is, in the sense of making the party electable as a government rather than merely making Mr Portillo electable as leader ­ is a licence to differ on Europe, and the single currency in particular, which can bring pro-Europeans back into the Shadow Cabinet.

The converse would apply to a Clarke leadership bid as well, of course. He could not ignore the convictions of a majority of the parliamentary party; but he showed, in his abortive leadership bid in 1997, that he understood this. The first sharp question for Mr Portillo today is whether he too is really ready to lead a Shadow Cabinet of all the Tory talents. It is not far-fetched to say that the future of his party could depend on his reply.