Right Man, Wrong Time?

It takes extraordinary cool for a politician to remain unruffled when, despite all his efforts, the polls unswervingly show his party heading for electoral disaster. Conservative leader William Hague is as cool as they come, campaigning to Armageddon with unfailing good humor. Perhaps that's because he comes from northern Yorkshire, where folk don't believe in showing emotion, and his judo blue belt also suggests a man of tough-minded self-discipline. Perhaps more pertinent, the 40-year-old Hague has learned to live with remorseless criticism. For the past four years he has been pilloried, mocked and satirized for his political judgment, his bald head and baby face, his speech-coach enunciation and even for the demure silence of his pretty wife Ffion.

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But even a Moses would have found leading the Tories a cruelly thankless job after their l997 debacle, when an electorate weary of 18 years of Conservative government wiped out half their parliamentary seats. An Oxford graduate and former management consultant, Hague had been a party wunderkind from the day when, at 16, he impressed Margaret Thatcher with a speech at a party conference. He entered Parliament at age 27 and joined John Major's cabinet as Welsh Secretary at 34. But the party inherited from the outgoing Major was demoralized, squabbling, losing members and bitterly divided over Britain's place in Europe. In the approach to this week's election, his job is on the line as he confronts both polls and precedent that say Thatcher's mighty party is about to be humiliated once again.

The precedent is formidable: there has been only one occasion since World War II when a British government defeated at one election has made a comeback at the next, and Hague harbors no realistic expectation that he can repeat that feat. Says Phil Collins, director of the London-based Social Market Foundation, an independent think tank: "From the beginning Hague believed that it was going to be a two-term haul, barring an external shock or an absolute calamity on the part of the government."

Not only has Labour suffered neither shock nor calamity, but the party has ruled over a successful economy that, though inherited from the Tories, has been nurtured carefully by the Blair government. Moreover, Blair accepted and continued most of the Thatcher reforms, leaving the Tories able to do little more than criticize on the margins policies of their own making. Only on the prickly issue of joining the single European currency has Hague succeeded in setting his party apart, and even that required enormous effort to unite a party deeply divided on the issue.

But that alone has not been enough to restore Tory popularity, which explains an electoral strategy that veers to the right. Hague stresses populist causes in an apparent effort to bind up the party's core vote, a strategy that — not coincidentally — builds personal support for the leadership fight that an election defeat will almost certainly trigger. In pursuit of that core vote Hague promised tough measures on crime and "bogus" asylum seekers, and spoke in apocalyptic terms about Labour. "You may have come to think that the slow death of Britain is inevitable," he told supporters last week. "I say it is not." But his stridency left voters cold. When he talked of Britain becoming a "foreign land" under Blair, he described a country with pounds replaced by euros and tax rises imposed by Brussels. But critics read a subtext of racism. He did nothing to correct that impression when he subsequently failed to deal speedily with a retiring backbencher who made inflammatory remarks on immigration and race. "Hague is not a racist," says Collins. "But for reasons of naiveté or opportunism, he is saying things that can be used and abused by less sensitive people."

Still, many of the Tory faithful, including retired teacher Iris Walters of Portsmouth, like the jaunty man. "He is intelligent," she says. "We are very happy with Hague." Essex University vice chancellor Ivor Crewe, author of numerous books on British politics, wonders whether any Tory leader could have done better under the circumstances. "Hague may be the right man at the wrong time," he says. If Hague goes, as Crewe predicts, shadow chancellor and former Defense Secretary Michael Portillo is the leading possibility as his successor. But having admitted to homosexual experiences as a young man, Portillo may find some resistance among rank-and-file true-blue Tories who now, for the first time, will make the choice.

And the prize may not be worth much. With confidence so high in a Blair victory there is now talk of a third Labour term, although Oxford professor of government Vernon Bogdanor warns, "If Blair's policy of putting more money into public services doesn't work ... there may be a switch to Conservative ideology again." But he adds: "Blair has a great instinct for what the people want." If his instincts prove right, the Tories could face a long future in the political wilderness, as Labour did during the Thatcher years.