Bring back Clarke, says Heseltine

Michael Heseltine, the former deputy Prime Minister, called today for former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke to be brought into the shadow cabinet.

Michael Heseltine, the former deputy Prime Minister, called today for former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke to be brought into the shadow cabinet.

In a veiled put-down of William Hague, the Conservative leader, he called Mr Clarke "the biggest Tory around".

Mr Hague defeated Kenneth Clarke in the final round in the battle for the Tory leadership after the last election. Since then, Mr Clarke has remained on the backbenches.

Mr Heseltine's remarks came in an interview with the Conservative-supporting journalist who will fight his seat of Henley on Thames at the next general election, Boris Johnson, editor of The Spectator magazine.

Mr Heseltine said: "The real schism in the Tory party is Europe, symbolised by the fact that Ken Clarke is the biggest Tory around and is not in the shadow cabinet.

"In the last 24 hours a senior civil servant and a senior journalist have told me that 'You, the Opposition, have created a Tory party in which there is no place for us', and these are people who have been down-the-line Tories all their lives."

He spoke of the image created by the Tory policy on Europe.

"It's the nationalist xenophobia of it all, the Little Englander Poujade lower-middle-class self-enrichment. It all has an image.

"When you add to that the issues of race and immigration they all seem of a kind."

In the interview, Mr Heseltine suggested the answer was to bring Mr Clarke into the shadow cabinet, if a suitably dignified berth could be found, and to change the policy on the euro referendum.

"You should do what Wilson did in 1975," Mr Heseltine continued. "Have freedom of expression and bring back the centrist element of the Tory Party."

He said he did not believe there were votes to be won on any scale over Europe. "We now have a Tory Party more Eurosceptic than at any time in its history."

Mr Heseltine said the European process was now as "irreversible and unstoppable as anything in politics ever is".