'BEST MAN' KEN CLARKE RUNS

KENNETH CLARKE tonight barged into the Tory leadership race, calling on the MPs and the membership to pick him as the man best placed to make the party winners again after "four wasted years".

In a combative and outspoken launch statement, he said that, of the five declared runners, only two - Michael Por-tillo and himself - were seen by the public as "credible" potential prime ministers.

And he continued: "I offer myself as the leader best able to carry the fight to Labour and win back the lost Conservative voters."

Mr Clarke, in exile from the Tory frontbench since the defeat of John Major's government in 1997, was brutal about the failure of the party under William Hague.

He said: "We have just wasted four years before suffering the most humiliating defeat in Conservative history. We could have achieved a much better result against a Labour government that was unpopular and had been unsuccessful.

Many people voted with a heavy heart for another term of Blair government because they could see no electable alternative."

In a direct challenge, he went on: "I want to see another Tory government soon. The party membership must now decide whether they have reacquired the will to win again."

Mr Clarke made his move with a Press conference at the staunchly Rightwing Institute of Directors in Pall Mall. As a former Chancellor, Home Secretary and Health Secretary, he is unquestionably the most experienced big-hitter in what is now a five-way battle. But his late entry meant that much of the available support from the shadow cabinet and from Conservative MPs had already been pledged to his rivals.

There were also serious doubts as to how many of the 166 MPs, overwhelmingly Eurosceptic, would be ready to set that issue aside to support the party's leading pro-European.

Mr Clarke, tackled head-on the issue, saying that, if he became leader, every Tory MP would have a "free vote and freedom in debate on the single currency". But, in a move which looks certain to enrage the party's diehard Eurosceptics, he said that, if he took charge, he would water down the hostile Tory stance to the EU on a whole range of issues, from majority voting to the Treaty of Nice to the European Rapid Reaction Force, which critics have attacked as a Euro Army in the making.

"When I am leader, these will not be the official policies of the party," Mr Clarke bluntly declared.

Rightwing candidate Iain Duncan Smith this afternoon named four more MPs committed to backing him, bringing his declared total to 12, with more promised. Former Tory chairman Michael Ancram announced that he is setting up his campaign headquarters in theatreland, in Shaftesbury Avenue.

Mr Ancram's hopes, however, of picking up support as the flag- bearer for the Centre-Moderate Conservatives were damaged by Mr Clarke's move.

Tories are voting tonight to pick the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee who will oversee the leadership contest, held under new rules now facing their first test. The first round of the MPs ballot is expected next week.

Mr Clarke, Mr Ancram, Mr Duncan Smith and Right-winger David Davis are slugging it out for second place in the MPs' election, which Mr Portillo is expected to win comfortably.

The top two will go forward to a final poll of the party's 300,000 grassroots members, where the result is far less certain.

Mr Clarke's critics were suggesting that, at 60, he is too old by far to take the party through a long haul back to credibility, which could easily stretch through two five-year parliamentary terms. But Mr Clarke's hopes were spurred by a weekend poll, carried out by Omnibus for bookmakers Ladbrokes, suggesting 32 per cent saw him as the man most likely to make them vote Tory, compared with 20 per cent for Mr Portillo.

Copyright 2001
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.