What is all this nonsense about Ken Clarke? I wouldn't presume to comment about who should go where in any putative reshuffle, but the idea that Ken Clarke could not play a front bench role because he is a Europhile is utter nonsense - and furthermore, it reveals a distressing lack of confidence in where we are as a party on the issue of Europe.
There are those who believe we must withdraw completely and those who believe we should embrace Lisbon and the Euro. Their views are well known. It is stupid to ask a great man like Ken Clarke, who has always been honest about where he stands on Europe, to start lying and obfuscating now.
The views that matter are David Cameron's and the settled will of the parliamentary party, party membership, and indeed, judging from the poll at the weekend, the British people. All Ken Clarke need say is something along the lines of "My views on this subject are clear, but David is relaxed about our disagreeing."
As well he might be. Because the debate has been had, and the issue settled. The vast majority of both the parliamentary party and, as far as I can tell, my fellow PPCs, believe we should remain in the EU, go no further in integration and aid it to become a more efficient, smaller, sleeker, less navel-gazing organisation. In the end, as I have argued elsewhere, that will probably mean some sort of "flexible Europe" with an inner core of fully integrated countries pooling their sovereignty completely, a USE, and an allied outer group maintining their own nationality, which will entail repatriating several powers. But that is a matter for the future.
Clarke was a brilliant Chancellor. It is sheer joy to watch him speak from our benches, leaving Gordon Brown and the nonentities of the current Cabinet gibbering wrecks in his wake. If it was felt he were needed back on the front benches in some economic role, it would be foolishness of the first order to try to block that over an issue like Europe. And if he does not agree with recognising marriage in the tax system, so what? It's party policy, clearly stated by David Cameron. Again, there's no real debate over where we as a party stand on the matter.
Ken Clarke is a superstar. I have no idea whether David Cameron intends to bring him back to the shadow Cabinet, or for that matter whether he wants to come. We would go into the Euro over my cold, dead body, but seeing a giant of a politician like Ken Clarke in a front bench role wouldn't cause me a second's anxiety.
