Clarke woos 'powerbase' eurosceptics

KENNETH Clarke yesterday signalled to Tory members that he will not push for Britain to join the euro should he become prime minister - his most significant concession yet to the party's eurosceptic majority.

Mr Clarke, seeking the Tory leadership for the third time, did not deny his enthusiasm for the single currency or the European project, but accepted that to try to lead a Conservative government towards greater integration would be futile and foolish.

"If you think I have gone through all this process to try and become Prime Minister in four years' time to see the whole blasted thing exploded when I destroy my political base by trying to take us into the single currency, I can only assure you that is a paranoid fear," Mr Clarke said at a crowded fringe meeting at the conference.

The 65-year-old former chancellor also accepted that as Tory leader and afterwards as premier, he would have to appoint leading eurosceptics.

"My cabinet would obviously overwhelmingly be eurosceptic," he said. "I know my colleagues in parliament, let alone the voluntary party, well enough to know that any secret plot I have to turn the whole lot back into europhiles is rather a tall order."

Mr Clarke also delivered a stern warning to the party's grassroots to give up their "obsession" with Europe or face another decade in opposition.

"If we lose again and settle down to being a right-wing party of opposition, we are in terrible trouble," Mr Clarke said.

Instead of worrying about the nature of the EU and Britain's place in it, Mr Clarke said, Tories should be more concerned with arguing for economic reform and the opening of European markets.

Mr Clarke's popular appeal to unaligned voters makes him a strong favourite to be one of the two contenders chosen by MPs for a vote of Tory members, but his European views may once again prove to be his Achilles heel.

On the basis of his fringe meeting, he appears to be addressing that problem, winning a warm reception even from many affirmed sceptics.

Still, his opponents remain more than happy to play to the party's instinctive scepticism.

In a simultaneous fringe meeting yesterday, Liam Fox, the right-wing foreign affairs spokesman, raised the prospect of withdrawing from the European Union.

"Either you believe in Europe at any price, that we have to be in Europe at any price because we cannot survive without it, or you do not. If you do not, it tends to suggest there's a price you are not willing to pay," he said.

The Tory party's problem over Europe, he said, was not drawing the "red lines" which would trigger UK withdrawal from the EU. "Our political weakness has been our lack of courage in defining what price we are not willing to pay for Europe".