London – Britain’s Conservative Party, struggling to find its way back to power, wraps up its annual conference in the seaside resort of Blackpool today with a colorful veteran, Kenneth Clarke, and the reliable-but-gray front-runner, David Davis, vying to take over the party’s reins.
After making only minimal inroads against the ruling Labor Party in May parliamentary elections, the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher has been searching for the right mix of issues and personalities to take back the initiative from Prime Minister Tony Blair and treasury chief Gordon Brown, Blair’s heir apparent.
Conservative leader Michael Howard announced after the May election that he would resign, opening up what has become a deliberate search for the fourth leader of the party in eight years.
The issue is to be resolved Dec. 7, when the rank and file will vote.
At Blackpool, conferees heard from the five declared hopefuls, and aside from Clarke and Davis, intellectual newcomer David Cameron was given an outside chance.
The polished Cameron, 38 and in Parliament only five years, said he would bring youth and vigor back to the party.
At 65, Clarke is regarded as too old by some party members, especially since he would be nearly 70 by the next parliamentary election. But polls have shown that the former treasury chief, who has been in Parliament since 1970 and who headed four key ministries under Thatcher and John Major, is the candidate with the widest following among the public.
Supporters believe his homey personality, his passion for sports, jazz and cigars, and his strong and early opposition to the war in Iraq add to his allure for the average Briton and make him the most likely to pull independents and some Labor and Liberal Democrat voters over to the Conservatives.
Within the Conservative parliamentary delegation, however, Clarke is seen as too much of a maverick, and many have not forgotten his enthusiasm for European integration in the 1990s, which went against the party’s Euro-skeptic orthodoxy.
