A bullish Mr Kenneth Clarke has declared himself the man to end the Conservative Party's "obsession" over Europe and lead it to victory at the next general election.
Instantly upsetting all predictions for a Tory leadership race set to run until September, Mr Clarke finally ended the guessing-game by counting himself into the contest to succeed Mr William Hague and challenging his party's members "to decide whether they have reacquired the will to win".
Dismissing the claims of Mr Michael Ancram, Mr Iain Duncan Smith and Mr David Davis, the former chancellor said the polls showed people regarded Mr Michael Portillo and himself as the only two "credible" potential prime ministers among the five declared candidates.
The same polls, he asserted, showed him to be the only one capable of winning back the millions of voters who had abandoned the Tories, propelled Mr Blair into office in 1997 and returned him with a second landslide victory on June 7th. "I offer myself as the leader best able to carry the fight to Labour and win back the lost Conservative voters," Mr Clarke told reporters as he set about a bonfire of the policies on which Mr Hague had fought and lost the election.
Suggesting many in the Tory party had yet to understand the enormity of their second rejection, Mr Clarke said: "We have just wasted four years before suffering the most humiliating defeat in Conservative history. We could have achieved a much better result against a Labour government that was unpopular and had been unsuccessful." Many, he continued, had "voted with a heavy heart for another Blair term" quite simply "because they could see no electable alternative".
Having sat out Mr Hague's leadership term on the Tory backbenches, Mr Clarke made it clear he would not serve in a shadow cabinet led by Mr Portillo or anyone else. He had served 26 years on the frontbench and said simply: "I want to rejoin it as leader".
Under his leadership, he said, the party would not continue its opposition to the Nice Treaty and the extension of qualified majority voting, but would instead support enlargement and embrace the European Rapid Reaction Force.
He continued: "Throughout the last parliament we used vivid language about the imagined threat to create a superstate, and the mythical imminent risk of being governed from Brussels instead of Westminster. The electorate interpreted this as extreme English nationalism." And he asserted that the ground rules for a new, more broadly based and united Tory Party would require it to tone down its language and "speak realistically on European issues".
Promising to end the "obsession" with Europe which had poisoned the Thatcher and Major governments, Mr Clarke said under his leadership all Tories - including members of the shadow cabinet - would have freedom of debate and a free vote on Britain's membership of the European single currency.
However, he warned that that issue would not determine the outcome of the next election. Most leading Conservatives had accepted the need to develop credible and distinctive policies on the future of the public services. The lack of such policies "was the biggest single cause of our defeat". Conservatives, said Mr Clarke, "should all be social liberals", accepting "personal liberty to choose different lifestyles" and the cultural diversity of modern Britain.