The former Conservative Chancellor says he would be "flatly against" his party forming a pact with Nigel Farage's Reform UK
04:00, 16 Feb 2025
Former Chancellor Ken Clarke says Reform UK would do "extraordinarily well" if a general election was held now but he is "flatly against" the Conservatives forming a coalition with them. Lord Clarke, who was Rushcliffe's Conservative MP for 50 years, says Farage is "well placed to do a poor man's Donald Trump".
The veteran politician, now 84, took part in a wide-ranging interview with Nottinghamshire Live shortly after Reform topped a YouGov poll for the first time. Farage's party pushed the Tories into third place and many Conservative MPs are calling for a coalition with Reform.
Even Newark MP Robert Jenrick failed to rule out more co-operation with Reform in a recent interview. When this was put to him, Lord Clarke interjected to say: "Robert seems to have changed extraordinarily.
"He was a perfectly reasonable One Nation Tory when I had him as a political neighbour and got on very well with him. He seems to have suddenly converted to being a Nigel Farage imitator."
Asked specifically what he would make of a Conservative coalition with Reform, something party leader Kemi Badenoch has ruled out for now, Lord Clarke said: "I'm flatly against it.
"After Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, I was a rather discontented Conservative myself. If they merge with Reform, then whatever new leadership was doing that would have to persuade people like me to continue to vote for the party."
Nottinghamshire Live visited Lord Clarke in his West Bridgford home on February 7 to discuss everything from the last general election to the reasons behind Reform UK's current polling success. Although Lord Clarke describes himself as retired after stepping down as Rushcliffe MP in 2019, he still retains another home in London and usually attends the House of Lords twice a week, a job he does not take "very seriously" given his belief in an elected upper chamber.
To those who followed Lord Clarke's views on Brexit and its proponents after the 2016 referendum, it will be no surprise that he is no fan of Nigel Farage. The former MP says in his memoirs that there was "no madder period" in his career than Brexit and that the worst mistake by a Prime Minister in his lifetime was David Cameron calling the Brexit referendum.
Having first been elected in 1970, Lord Clarke was a key figure during Edward Heath's time in office in ensuring the government was successful in securing Britain's entry into the European Communities. Asked in past interviews what caused the Brexit vote, Lord Clarke has previously reflected that the political establishment he was a part of was perhaps "a bit too establishment".
Yet when asked now, Lord Clarke is a huge defender of his service in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, during which he held cabinet roles including Health Secretary, Home Secretary and Chancellor. Lord Clarke instead pins the origins of today's populism on the 2008 financial crash.
The senior Conservative believes Kemi Badenoch should not rush into judgements on how the party should turn its fortunes around after the 2024 election saw them record their worst result in history. "She's going about it the right way", Lord Clarke says.
"Her caution, not rushing into doing impetuous things. She's got five years to take a party that is absolutely rock bottom and give it a chance of being possibly electable.
"I'm reasonably reassured that she's going to make a good professional job of it, but the public are still very hostile to the Conservative Party. They're very critical of the last years of the last government and it's no good expecting her to achieve some miracle turn around in the polls in the first few months in the job.
"She shouldn't start doing silly things and going for noisy publicity and simplistic statements and courting Reform in the belief that it will speed things up. I think it might have the opposite effect.
"Bear in mind, we lost most seats to the Liberal Democrats. I think if the Liberal Democrats had got their act together here, the Liberal Democrats were more likely winners for a seat like Rushcliffe.
"I know I live in a coal mining county, but politically, Rushcliffe is almost a little blob of Home Counties at the southern end of Nottinghamshire." The result in Rushcliffe was a particular shock of the 2024 general election, with Labour emerging victorious for the first time since 1966.
Yet for the man who held the seat for 50 years, he was not surprised. "I would have been amazed if the Conservative Party had won the last election", Lord Clarke said.
"The total collapse and the geographical pattern of the collapse meant it gave an unpopular opponent, Keir Starmer in the Labour Party, an enormous majority because of the way our first past the post system works. I find that in all the Western democracies, there's an enormous public anger with the political establishment and huge discontent with the state of the world.
"I find it almost unimaginable that someone like Donald Trump could become president of the most powerful country in the world on what is obviously a combination of the same views. Le Pen is likely to win in France, Alternative for Deutschland is going to do extremely well in Germany and if there was an election now, Farage and Reform would do extraordinarily well."
The long period of Conservative opposition between 1997 and 2010 saw Lord Clarke unsuccessfully stand in three Tory leadership contests, which led to success for William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and David Cameron respectively. Although having latterly served two years as Justice Secretary in the coalition government, it is Lord Clarke's time as Chancellor from 1993 to 1997 that he appears proudest of.
"The second half of the 90s and the first half of the 2000s, Major and Blair, were the great normality", the former Chancellor says. "People weren't angry with either of the parties, the economy was doing extremely well, we had growth that we can only dream of and we were a very respected country in the world with some political clout."
Asked how the new Labour government is doing in restoring the UK to that position, Lord Clarke says Rachel Reeves is too constrained by her party's "stupid and irresponsible promise" in the election not to raise taxes for working people. "It's irresponsible for any government in an election to say they're not going to raise any of the major taxes because you never have a clue in this globalised economy what actual problems are going to hit you.
"I don't think they're going to be able to stick to that promise for the rest of their period in office." Although one of the most controversial acts of the new government has been the change to Winter Fuel Allowance payments, Lord Clarke is mostly in favour of that step, merely believing that a "clearer means test" than Pension Credit was needed.
"It should have been abolished years ago. It's cost me a few hundred pounds personally that I don't get it and as you're probably noticing, I keep this room rather warm.
"I'm not a billionaire at all, but even billionaires got the Winter Fuel Allowance as a kind of prize for reaching a certain age. Perfectly prosperous, comfortable, middle-class people were all getting these hundreds of pounds back as a pre-Christmas election bribe, which is what it was introduced for."
Lord Clarke remains a loyal Conservative and although he is not allowed to vote in elections because of his House of Lords membership, he says he would have backed his successor Ruth Edwards again as Rushcliffe MP. Many experts say 2024 may well prove to be the general election in which two party politics died a death.
Although Lord Clarke does not believe that to be an inevitability, he believes Labour and the Conservatives have a huge mountain to climb for the public to trust either of them, adding: "Until we achieve a good run of economic growth again and can demonstrate that we're in control of immigration, which are the two big issues that are causing it, we're going to continue in the politics of anger and protest."