The return of the cad

National Review, Feb 24, 1997 by Anthony LeJeune

"ONE of the great immorality stories of our time" was a commentator's verdict. He was describing the selection of a new Conservative candidate for Chelsea and Kensington, probably the safest Conservative seat in Britain. Political scientists analyze the changing complexion of the parties -- how far the Conservatives are moving right, whether "New Labor" has really shed its atavistic socialism. But the interest in Chelsea and Kensington was altogether more lively.

The need for a new candidate was itself a tragi-comedy. The sitting member, Sir Nicholas Scott, had the misfortune, a little while ago, so to maneuver his car after some local conviviality that he nearly squashed a baby in a stroller. The baby's father, a foreigner, expostulated, whereupon Sir Nicholas took cover in a nearby house, leaving a female companion to express her own unflattering opinion of foreigners with babies who got in the way.

There was a row, but his sophisticated constituents forgave him. Then, at last autumn's Conservative Party Conference, he not only failed to arrive at an event where he should have been the host, but was discovered recumbent and somnolent in the street; a consequence, he explained, of some medically required painkillers' mixing badly with a modest glass of wine. This time his Constituency Association "de-selected" him from being their candidate at the coming election.

In such circumstances, the tendency is to choose a new candidate who is more or less the opposite of the old one. Sir Nicholas was over sixty, a former cabinet minister, and had behavioral problems. So did Chelsea and Kensington choose a young man of untried potential and impeccable reputation? Not exactly.

There was a significant political shift. Scott is a Europhile: all the short-listed candidates were Euroskeptic. Scott was a wet: the short list was solidly right-wing. The four finalists were all considered pretty good: but one was an unsmart woman from the provinces, one a local man about whom too much was known, and the runner-up was worthy but dull.

Behold then the winner: Alan Clark, 68 years old, a former cabinet minister -- and as for his behavioral record, "Are there any skeletons in your cupboard?" he was asked.

"Whole graveyardsful," he replied.

His father, Kenneth Clark, a life peer, was popularly known as "Lord Clark of Civilization" in honor of his wonderfully arrogant cultural series on television. Alan inherited, and lives in, a battlemented seventeenth-century castle. He is a multimillionaire. He is also a respected military historian, who raised a few hackles by musing on how well the German army had fought in defeat.

Tact is not his strong suit. He has described the present chancellor of the exchequer as a "puffy podgeball" and the deputy prime minister as a man who had "bought his own furniture" (that is, nouveau riche). When obliged to read a feminist-oriented statement in the House of Commons, he gabbled it derisively, afterward cheerfully admitting that he had not been "entirely sober." He outraged sensibilities by referring generically to "Bongo Bongo Land."

Unsurprisingly, he never achieved senior office: but he admired Margaret Thatcher for her Boadicea-like qualities and she was intrigued by him. When she fell, he relinquished office and in 1992 retired from Parliament.

In 1994 he published his diaries, which were utterly candid not only in the opinions expressed about other people, but about his own sex life. His amazingly loyal wife, Jane, was only 16 when, aged 30, he married her. In a very short while, he was having affairs. "Girls have to be succulent," he said, "and that means under 25."

Lust seems to have been in his heart almost continuously. The most celebrated episode involved the wife and two daughters of an English barrister and part-time judge who had emigrated to South Africa. Alan called them his "coven" and described assignations with all three. When the story broke, they came steaming back from South Africa in well-publicized rage (your correspondent dined out for weeks on the strength of having known them).

And these were only the extracts from his diaries which Alan Clark himself considered most publishable! There are said to be 18 more volumes. Meanwhile, he regretted having left Parliament. He missed the conspiring and the gossip.

AFTER Nicholas Scott's all-too-literal downfall, the burghers of Chelsea and Kensington set up what they called the SCOTCH committee -- "Seeking Candidates of Temperate Character and Habits." Nevertheless, Clark made it through to that final meeting, which was attended by nearly one thousand members of the local Conservative Association. His performance had them rolling in the aisles. "I liked him like a lot of women like him," admitted one lady of mature years.

"I'm not worried by his conduct," said an elderly man; "a bit envious maybe."

You must be good in future, they giggled: and he promised that he would.

Some, of course, were disgusted, but surprisingly few. Prime Minister John Major, perhaps gritting his teeth, said that Alan Clark's return would bring "a deal of color back into the House." Matthew Parris, formerly a Conservative MP, now a parliamentary sketch-writer, said it would have been a pity to waste such an unlosable seat on "some vanilla-flavored pixie. Bring on the fruitcakes."