Hague should be himself, not try to be Blair

Listening to the howls of execration that went up last Wednesday whenever Conservative MPs were mentioned, I was reminded of a similar occasion at a Labour conference. It was at Brighton in 1979, five months after Margaret Thatcher had won her first victory. The MPs were conveniently corralled (as they were not last week) in a kind of pen to the left of the platform looking outwards. So confined, they could be pointed at and jeered at, denigrated and denounced, as if they were the defendants in a Moscow show trial of the 1930s. One of the most ferocious speakers from the floor, a veritable tricoteuse, was Ms Patricia Hewitt, who, however, quickly made her peace with the subsequent leadership of the party and now sits decorously for Leicester West. When I feel in need of mental refreshment I sometimes re-read her speech.

It is doubtful whether any of last Wednesday's contributions will bear similar re-examination. Still, the underlying feeling was the same. As Stanley Holloway used to retail in his account of Albert and the lion, someone had got to be summonsed. Once again it was not to be the party's former ministers - who had, after all, been in charge, more or less - but the party's members of parliament. With Labour the solution, or part of it, was an electoral college to choose the party's leader.

The BBC's television news said last week that setting up this body had taken Labour 15 years. This was wrong. It took Labour just over 15 months, from the Brighton conference of 1979 to the Wembley special conference of January 1981. Of this new body the late Jeffrey Thomas, member for Abertillery, said: "Electoral college? Sounds more like a comprehensive to me." Anyway it produced Neil Kinnock and then John Smith.

In 1993 Smith changed the rules to allow a third each share for MPs, constituencies and trade unions instead of the 30:30:40 ratio that had existed in 1981-93. So Lord Archer was incorrect in saying that Labour MPs had a 30 per cent share of the electoral college, even if he was only 3.3 per cent out. The other change which Smith made was to allow constituency members and trade unionists to vote as individuals. In effect he abolished the block vote in this area, though not in all others.

After his death in 1994, Smith's new college produced Mr Tony Blair. No doubt this is what the BBC had in mind in asserting that it had taken 15 years to create an electoral college. It was thinking of the machinery that gave us Mr Blair. So is the Conservative Party. Mr Blair now dominates politics as C R Attlee, Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher did successively in 1945-90. The Conservatives are anxious to identify and isolate Mr Blair's magic ingredient and to incorporate it in their own washing-powder. That he stole part of the formula from them or, specifically, from Lady Thatcher only makes the search more complicated.

The Conservative college's details will not be vouchsafed us until the party's latest fish-out-of-water, Mr Archie Norman, has deliberated further and consulted for another six months. Unless there is a revolt in the parliamentary party, the effect, whatever the precise ratios may be, will be to cement Mr William Hague in position until the election. The constituency activists invariably support the sitting tenant. When Sir Archie Hamilton said that the party would not have had Lady Thatcher as leader if it had been left to the constituencies - and was greeted with angry dissent - he was right.

In 1975 they wanted Sir Edward Heath to carry on. In 1990 they wanted Lady Thatcher to do likewise. In 1995 they were solid for Mr John Major. In 1997 Mr Major, having decamped with understandable haste to the Oval cricket ground, was no longer on offer. So the troops settled for the next best thing in terms of established position in Mr Kenneth Clarke, much to the surprise of metropolitan Conservative commentators. When the representative with the crazed appearance who kept saying "It's our party" and whose name I fortunately failed to catch said also that 80 per cent of the constituencies had been in favour of Mr Hague, he was not being accurate. On the contrary: they preferred Mr Clarke.

If the United Kingdom joins the European single currency after a referendum but before the next election, Mr Clarke's hour may come again, on the reasoning that, if you can't beat them, you had better join them. Even so, I would expect Mr Hague to possess enough agility to make an accommodation with reality, though he might split his party in the process. For the moment Mr Hague is in charge.

His position rather resembles Sir Edward Heath's after 1965. Sir Edward was elected leader because he was thought to resemble Wilson, in particular because he was considered to be "abrasive", then an attribute much in demand in political circles. Likewise Mr Hague was elected because he was thought to resemble Mr Blair, in particular because he was young, a quality considered even more desirable. Alas! Mr Hague appeared much older than Mr Blair, even older than Mr Frank Dobson. People started to ask: have we all made a terrible mistake?

They asked the same question about Sir Edward, not because he seemed old, but because he was an uninspiring speaker who was regularly knocked about the ring by Wilson. Every autumn, with the inevitability of the falling leaves, the papers would say: "Edward Heath must make the speech of his life at Brighton/Blackpool (for Bournemouth did not become a venue till later) ... restore confidence in his leadership ... doubts ... worries." He would then make one or even two leaden speeches. He inaugurated the practice, which Mr Hague followed last week, of two speeches at the conference. He would then receive a prearranged standing ovation which went on and on, similarly a practice inaugurated under his auspices. The papers would write: "Edward Heath yesterday confounded his critics ... overwhelming support ... doubts laid to rest." Next year it would start all over again.

But in 1970, to everyone's astonishment, he won a general election, transforming a Labour majority of 96 into a Conservative majority of 30, a turnover of 126 seats. It will take rather more to turn Mr Blair's majority of 177 into a Conservative majority of any kind. Still, Labour's 1945 majority of 146 became a Conservative majority of 17 after six years, a turnover of 163. Mr Hague could realistically aim at governing with the aid of the Liberal Democrats and the Irish, though everyone is too polite to mention any such possibility these days.

He has already shown that he is highly competent both as a platform speaker and as a performer in the Commons. In the House he is Mr Blair's equal and can be his superior. What he cannot manage - what he should not try to manage - is Mr Blair's brand of comforting soup.

Indeed, Mr Blair sometimes reminds me of those United States evangelists, depicted in countless books and films, who enjoy long periods of popularity and prosperity, only to come to a sticky end after their hand has been detected either in till or up skirt. I am not suggesting that Mr Blair is at all liable to these failings - far from it - but only that the Conservatives should not relinquish all hope, as they seemed to be in danger of doing in Blackpool.