WI: Howard wins in 2005

Sorry, but this is just wrong. The way Bercow is regarded is mild by comparison. The right hated Clarke not just because he was a pro-european, (there were plenty of other in the party who didn't engender such hostility) but because he took no prisoners. He was always very robust in what he said back in the day, and wasn't afraid to say it. He called Iain Duncan-Smith's supporters, as I recall, "headbangers", and that was very much par for the course with Ken.

I doubt if the membership hated him quite as much as the parliamentary right, but the fact that he could not beat IDS (who was at that time a total nonentity) tells you all you need to know about how much he was distrusted by the membership.

In 97 he got about 40% of MPs, in 2001 still 1/3 in a 2 way spit, including plenty of right-wingers. Bercow is distrusted because of the wierd journey he has been on, Clarke's views have never really moved.

Again, sorry, but totally wrong. Portillo was depised in 2001 within the party (and this was very much a thing at all levels of the party) not just because of his conversion to social liberalism, but for a lot of other reasons as well - the way he had contemptuously behaved towards Hague in the shadow cabinet, and the turf wars regarding that. Then we get into the fact that his campaign was a shambles etc etc.

Portillo was regarded by the media as the best candidate and the favourite in OTL - and he lost. There were very few people in the party in 2001 who were trumpeting him.

I'm pretty sure Portillo wouldn't make it a full parliament anyway, not just because of the right but because he was just fed up of politics by that point.

No, Portillo was distrusted, and certain people were really against him. Again this had to do with the journey he had been on.
But again there was a strongly right-wing section that backed Portillo. Key Portillo allies - like Maude and Steve Norris, still went on to prosper. He was a divisive figure in the end.

The key media outlet was the Telegraph, which was pro IDS from an early stage, which had an important aspect on the membership. Portillo didn't even get all the support he might have expected from Times commentators.

I think you are overplaying the strong, and vocal, opposition of a minority of the Parliamentary the party to these two candidates, opposition which was effective because of both their very real flaws.

I've never heard a party member say anything strongly negative about either, and didn't around that time.

People seem not to have noticed that Tory MPs have a massive capacity for bitching, and further bitching, and then still more bitching, they've been bitching about Cameron for years, they bitched about Thatcher for years. Bitching is not necessarily rebellion.
 
In 97 he got about 40% of MPs, in 2001 still 1/3 in a 2 way spit, including plenty of right-wingers.

Plenty? If he'd got "plenty" of right-wingers, he would have won.

This is simply boiling things down to a rather blunt numbers game - yes, Ken always took the old left of the party as a bloc back in the pre-modernisation days, but he didn't win because they were all he took. He was a very polarising candidate. What else can you conclude from someone who was otherwise eminently electable, experienced etc, that they are beaten by, successively, Hague and IDS? Saying it's Europe doesn't cut it - positions like that can be modified by candidates and olive branches sent out. Ken was never willing to really do that. (He showed a glimmer of it in 2005 over the constitution, but that's as far as it really ever went) He wasn't willing because, as I said, he was a pretty bull-headed sort of politician. (He seems to have mellowed a lot now in old age)

As for Portillo, I just totally disagree really. Portillo is not Cameron four years earlier - he is someone who has been fighting, sometimes pretty bluntly fighting, in politics for fifteen years, and within the last five years up to 2001 he's taken more political positions than the karma sutra. When you've pretty badly pissed off the left and then gone on to pretty badly piss off the right, it's difficult to see who would support him beyond the hardcore. Portillo was expected to walk the 2001 contest, in fact there were suggestions of it being an acclamation, and he eventually came third. This really tells you all you need to know.
 
Last edited:
I suspect, btw, that the fact that your constituency party(s) would not be too unfavourable to either Ken or Portillo is to be expected and is a geographical/social thing - if you go out into the wilds of the home counties, midlands etc and talked to some of members there, particularly the older members, I'm sure they'd have a different tale to tell.
 
Top