Who would the best leader be for the Tories in 2001?

There has been a lot of debate over 97' leadership election and 2001 GE for the Tories. So, who does AH believe would have been the best Tory leader for the 2001 GE and possibly onwards?
 
My thoughts is have Portillo survive in 1997 and he becomes leader instead of Hague.

Hague i feel was not quite ready for leadership in time for the 2001 election and needed a bit more experience on the front bench (he is now an excellent Foreign Secretary and possibly one the best we have had in a good long while)

Portillo would have likely had a similar result to Hague in 2001 and would have clung on for a few years after 2001, 2003 with the Iraq war becoming a real mess i suspect that Portillo would have been stabbed in the back and most likely Hague would have won the subsequent election for leadership.

Hague was a very powerful debater at PMQ's and quite frequently had Blair on the ropes combine that with the mess of Iraq and Afghanistan at the time of the 2005 election (maybe even deferred until 2006) it is quite possible that the Labour Majority of the 2005 election is down to as low as 25/30 rather than the 66 it achieved.

That is my thoughts anyway
 
Best or most electable?

William Hague was the best but seemingly unelectable in the eyes of the majority of the British public for being bald and northern. His main opponant, (by perception, even though that's not really how British elections are supposed to work), was good looking, had nice hair and sounded southern.

And yes, I am that cynical about the inability of the British public to understand what they're voting for if it's not done by phone on a prime time TV "talent" show.
 
Howard or Rifkind in 1997, easily.* And if they hadn't made a complete balls-up of that Parliament like Hague, which it's difficult to see them doing, then they could probably stay on past 2001, with a new generation (if not neccessarily modernisation, not explicit modernisation) candidate taking over after them.

That's the hope, anyway. Personally I wonder if the Hague and IDS leaderships were a neccessary learning experience to the party. It's difficult to see, certainly, a Cameron 2005 appeal to the party without the right being so thoroughly discredited by those two twin leadership car-crashes.

*I believe I've previously stated on here that Clarke in '97 would be a useful electoral device to get the Tories back on their feet in 2001, to then be discarded, but that assumes he could make it to 2001 (I think he could, but not a given) and that his leadership wouldn't perpetuate the factional paradigms of the nineties.

Once again I'm reminded how important perception is to the course of events.
 
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PoD is that Newsnight has the item following Howard's interview ready for transmission so Paxo doesn't keep asking him that question because he can't think of anything else to keep the interview going. Howard wins the contest and doesn't go as far to the right as Hague does, this means Shaun Woodward doesnt defect opening up the Witney seat for a young David Cameron who may not get a chance at reaching Parliament. In 2001 the Tories manage to get back over 200 seats, Howard continues quietly reforming the Party in the subsequent Parliament, 2005 sees another gain of around 30 seats, Howard then announces he's standing down, Hague who has been a very impressive Shadow Chancellor over the last Parliament wins easily. He fights a better campaign than Cameron did IOTL and with an easier electoral mountain to climb he wins a 1992 sized majority.

I don't think Portillo would have done any better, by 1997 he was pretty much the embodiment of everything the public hated about the Tories, they may have dodged a bullet there.
 
PoD is that Newsnight has the item following Howard's interview ready for transmission so Paxo doesn't keep asking him that question because he can't think of anything else to keep the interview going. Howard wins the contest and doesn't go as far to the right as Hague does, this means Shaun Woodward doesnt defect opening up the Witney seat for a young David Cameron who may not get a chance at reaching Parliament. In 2001 the Tories manage to get back over 200 seats, Howard continues quietly reforming the Party in the subsequent Parliament, 2005 sees another gain of around 30 seats, Howard then announces he's standing down, Hague who has been a very impressive Shadow Chancellor over the last Parliament wins easily. He fights a better campaign than Cameron did IOTL and with an easier electoral mountain to climb he wins a 1992 sized majority.

I don't think Portillo would have done any better, by 1997 he was pretty much the embodiment of everything the public hated about the Tories, they may have dodged a bullet there.
I completely agree with this one as well to be perfectly honest.
Hague i think is the best prime minster we have never had. (who had a chance at the job)
 
Do you mean 2001 "Must appease the grassroots" William Hague or post-2005 William Hague? Because the latter would be immensely preferable to the former as Prime Minister.
 
Michael Howard for 2001, he was enough of a reformer to start detoxifying the party while also being tolerable to the right.

Howard wins the contest and doesn't go as far to the right as Hague does, this means Shaun Woodward doesnt defect opening up the Witney seat for a young David Cameron who may not get a chance at reaching Parliament. In 2001 the Tories manage to get back over 200 seats, Howard continues quietly reforming the Party in the subsequent Parliament

I have trouble picturing Michael Howard as a reformer. For those who remembered his time as Home Secretary, it was difficult to see him as anything but a reactionary even post-IDS, let alone in 2001 (and Howard's record is the only reason I voted Labour in 2005). I always assumed the idea of exchanging IDS for Howard was founded on their respective electoral credibility, rather than any particular policy difference (except perhaps on foreign policy, where he was in accord with the less adventurous tradition while IDS keenly supported Bush and Blair). Even in OTL his whole snide "are you thinking what we're thinking?" campaign undermined the more liberal and less bigoted positions he'd ostensibly taken on some issues, and I think he really prevented the Tories capitalising on the drop in support for Labour in 2005.

In 1997-2001, Howard would be much less of a reformer/moderate than Hague (and it's easy to forget that Hague was a reform-inclined leader in many ways, going to festivals and wearing casual clothes etc). By 2005 he was the elder statesman being given a second chance in the limelight, leading a party bruised by two landslide defeats. But 8 years earlier he'd be much closer to his old positions, to the Howard known for banning raves and ending the automatic right to silence, even the earlier advocate of ID cards and the death penalty; and he'd be leading a party that doesn't yet know it's stopped being the natural party of government (as it had been for over a century) or feel any need for fundamental reform, that thinks it just needs to restore the economic credibility lost in 1992, unite on a single EU policy and wait for Labour's inevitable implosion.

Section 28 (and Woodward's related departure) is a prime example: why would Howard (who'd been the minister responsible for introducing it) handle it any differently to the way Hague did? Even David Cameron was ardently for Section 28 up until 2003. Defending Section 28 was an obvious stance for the Tories at a time when they saw nothing wrong in their pre-1992 record (except maybe the Poll Tax) and their media allies were merrily running smears like "pink mafia" against the government (both completely misreading the public mood). When Howard finally dropped the Tories' commitment it in 2003, he was bowing to organised internal pressure that just wasn't there before 2001.

I think a completely unreconstructed Michael Howard, facing a much more popular Blair than he did in 2005, is going to do even worse than Hague in 2001. Howard's leadership hurt the Tories in 2005 - probably not as much as IDS' would have, but it's impossible to be sure; in 2001, he might well have managed to kill the party.
 
It's right to identify a Howard '97 leadership as certainly not being a modernisation-orientated leadership, but I completely disagree with you on him being worse or less grounded than Hague. Hague tried modernisation in his first few months, tried it utterly cack-handedly (Baseball cap, going to carnivals, etc) gave up pretty much before '98 had dawned, tried about a hundred vague (Actually one of his nicknames around 1999 or so) 're-launches' of the party, gave up on that, in fact gave up on any sense of leadership at all and swung wildly to the right towards the end of the Parliament. This ended with the Tories going into 2001 with basically two policies - keep the pound (Threre was never any risk of it being given up without the British electorate's say-so by that point) and stop Britain becoming a 'foreign land'. The rest, in so far as it existed at all, was a dog's breakfast of contradictions (slash taxes, raise public spending - I remember even us, as seventeen year-old politics students, taking the piss out of this at the time) born of Hague trying to appease both Portillo and the right simultaneously in the shadow cabinet. Irrespective of any ideological prejudice a person brings to the analysis, Hague was in short an incredibly weak leader.

It is very hard to believe that Howard would make such a horrible mess of that Parliament as Hague did, or go further to the right than Hague eventually did, which was, let's put it in perspective, probably one of if not the most right-wing platform the Tory party has fought on. He already had established kudos with the right for the reasons you identify, so likely wouldn't feel the need to stomp about for appreciation from them, and was a cannier operator than Hague. I get the sense that his 2005 Lynton Crosby-inspired strategy was as much a hold-up operation born of his truncated leadership (Howard was leader for all of about two years, it's worth bearing in mind) as it was genuine Howard by that point. It's hard to believe, certainly, that Howard in his heart of hearts went from believing firmly in replicating a comfort zone strategy to being the godfather of modernisation (It was his promotion of Cameron and Osborne to the shadow cabinet after the election that gave them the stature to take over the party - and Howard was fully conscious of what he was doing in that respect) all in the space of a few months.

This of course was after three election defeats, two very heavily. You had to be a very dim or ideologically blinkered Tory by 2003 not to realise that the future lay away from the strategies that had been pursued in opposition to that point. Viewpoints had been modified by all, and doubtless Howard's were to a fair extent. But an alt-Howard doing worse than Hague in the '97 Parliament I don't see. To my mind A more stable, less insecure leadership (if not neccessarily a hugely more moderate one) can only reap some small electoral reward. (And I am thinking small - up to 180-200 seats, max. A net gain of fifteen or twenty seats should not be a big ask in 2001 to any Tory leadership that is not actively ruinous to its own cause. There were a fair few seats that Labour should not have realistically been expected to hold for more than a Parliament that they did hold until 2005.)
 
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It's right to identify a Howard '97 leadership as certainly not being a modernisation-orientated leadership, but I completely disagree with you on him being worse or less grounded than Hague.

Not less grounded. I agree Howard would have been a much stronger leader than Hague, and no he wouldn't have made the same mess Hague did. But the result in 2005 suggests Howard's stronger leadership cannot boost the Tories by much - he only added 400,000 votes and 0.7% share in 2005. For my money, someone other than Howard (Clarke, Portillo, possible even David Davies) could have at least forced a hung Parliament that year, simply by not prompting reluctant Labour voters into voting Labour.

On the other hand, I maintain Howard would also have been much more scary. Even if Hague had somehow become PM his tendency to vacillate would in itself have prevented him implementing much of a right-wing agenda. But just a slight prospect of Howard as PM gives a lot of disaffected Labour voters a reason to turn out in 2001. These two things together make me think the Tories would have lost seats in 2001 under Howard.

Even if I'm wrong about that and Howard doesn't scare anyone, and manages to do as well nationally in 2001 as he did in 2005, that's only taking the Tories up to 170 seats give or take a couple. That's the best-case scenario for Howard in 2001, and wildly optimistic in my view.

It's hard to believe, certainly, that Howard in his heart of hearts went from believing firmly in replicating a comfort zone strategy to being the godfather of modernisation (It was his promotion of Cameron and Osborne to the shadow cabinet after the election that gave them the stature to take over the party - and Howard was fully conscious of what he was doing in that respect) all in the space of a few months.

Well, Portillo ostensibly did. And it's quite possible that the lack of advancement among the electorate between 2001 and 2005, finally convinced Howard of what Portillo had realised eight years earlier. But Cameron himself managed to go through that transititon in less than 2 years - he was firmly in comfort zone territory until 2003, at least on things like section 28.
 
Well, you can't really infer much from 2005, because there were fairly large mitigating circumstances: Howard had only been leader for a short while, and the party as a whole had thoroughly ballsed-up the parliament as a result of the IDS leadership and its fallout.

It's certainly possible Howard would go on a right-wing barnburner if elected in '97 but I suspect not. And even so, it's rather difficult to believe this would have discouraged more than the same ultimate approach did IOTL under Hague. People who find Howard's Home Secretary populism scary were pretty unlikely to vote Tory anyway. More likely, I think, would be a similar approach that he took IOTL after 2003 - attack the government hard on basic competence and trust. (And there was a fair bit of ammunition in the '97 parliament from Labour for that)
 

libbrit

Banned
Best or most electable?

William Hague was.....seemingly unelectable in the eyes of the majority of the British public for being bald and northern. His main postponement .........sounded southern.

Because being a southerner really plays well in northern England, Scotland and Wales........
 
It depends which Portillo. 1997 Portillo or the much improved 2013 Portillo?

The much improved Portillo? LOL

Anyway, in 2000 as Shadow Chancellor he went along with a few New Labour Policies. It is not unforeseeable that he could have stolen some of the votes in the centre as leader in 2001, if he becomes leader after 2000.
He did create a lot of animosity within the party faithful though, through his spats with Hague.
 
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