Welcome Back, Ken Clarke

And goodbye, Hyacinth, to be followed rapidly by David Cameron. Clarke himself will not become Leader. But someone (David Davis?) who could reasonably claim to be a serious politician will. And that would be quite a change.

Clarke is outside the Tory mainstream on Europe? How, exactly? The Tories are the party of the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, eighteen consecutive annual votes to approve the Common Agricultural Policy (with only the tiniest handful of rebels, towards the very hand), eighteen consecutive annual votes to approve the Common Fisheries Policy (likewise), the withdrawal of the whip from an infinitesimal number of MPs who had merely abstained on increased British funding of the EU, the deselection of a Maastricht rebel and of no other MP ever on the European issue, the fake call for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty rather than for its simple rejection by Parliament, and the refusal to promise to campaign for a No vote in the extremely unlikely event of any such referendum. Even the vague promise to revisit the CFP, an old Major hand like Michael Howard’s nod to Euroscepticism, has been ditched by Cameron, Michael Heseltine’s mini-me. The Tories have not left the European People’s Party, and they never will.

Meanwhile, this is a golden opportunity to amend the Standing Orders of both Houses so as to require that Ministers appear to answer questions in either House as required, rather than only in that of which they are members. The Tories could embarrass the Government (and do the right thing) by putting down such an amendment. What is stopping them?