Clarke sought election to the House of Commons almost immediately after Cambridge. His political career began by contesting the Labour stronghold of
Mansfield at the
1964 and
1966 elections. In
June 1970, just before his 30th birthday, he won the
East Midlands constituency of
Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, south of
Nottingham, from Labour MP
Tony Gardner. Clarke was soon appointed a Government
Whip, and served as such from 1972 to 1974; he, with the assistance of Labour rebels, helped ensure Edward Heath's government won key votes on British entry into the
European Communities (which later evolved into the
European Union). Even though Clarke opposed the election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative Party Leader in 1975, he was appointed as her Industry Spokesman from 1976 to 1979, and then occupied a range of ministerial positions during her premiership. From 2017 to 2019 he served as
Father of the House. Following his expulsion from the
Conservative Party in September 2019, he became the first Independent MP to hold the position of Father of the House since
Clement Tudway, who died in office as MP for
Wells in 1815. Lord Clarke is the subject of a
portrait in oil commissioned by Parliament.
Early ministerial positions Clarke first served in the government of Margaret Thatcher as
Parliamentary secretary for
Transport (1979–81) and
Parliamentary under-secretary of state for
Transport (1981–82), and then
Minister of State for
Health (1982–85). Clarke joined the Cabinet as
Paymaster General and Employment Minister (1985–87) (his Secretary of State,
Lord Young of Graffham, sat in the Lords), and served as
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of the
DTI (1987–88) with responsibility for Inner Cities. While in that position, Clarke announced the sale to
British Aerospace of the
Rover Group, a new name for
British Leyland, which had been nationalised in 1975 by the government of
Harold Wilson.
Health Secretary (and aftermath) Clarke was appointed the first
Secretary of State for Health when the department was created out of the former
Department of Health and Social Security in July 1988. Clarke, with backing from John Major, persuaded Thatcher to accept the controversial "
internal market" concept to the
NHS. Clarke claimed that he had persuaded Thatcher to introduce internal competition in the NHS as an alternative to her preference for introducing a system of compulsory health insurance, which he opposed. He told his biographer Malcolm Balen: "
John Moore was pursuing a line which Margaret [Thatcher] was very keen on, which made everything compulsory medical insurance. I was bitterly opposed to that...The
American system is...the world's worst health service – expensive, inadequate and with a lot of rich doctors". In her memoirs, Thatcher claimed that Clarke, although "a firm believer in state provision", was "an extremely effective Health minister – tough in dealing with vested interests and trade unions, direct and persuasive in his exposition of government policy". In January 1989, Clarke's White Paper
Working for Patients appeared; this advocated giving hospitals the right to become self-governing
NHS Trusts, taxpayer-funded but with control over their budgets and independent of the
regional health authorities. It also proposed that doctors be given the option to become "
GP fundholders". This would grant doctors control of their own budgets in the belief that they would purchase the most effective services for their patients. Instead of doctors automatically sending patients to the nearest hospital, they would be able to choose where they were treated. In this way, money would follow the patient and the most efficient hospitals would receive the greatest funding. This was not well received by doctors and their trade union, the
British Medical Association, launched a poster campaign against Clarke's reforms, claiming that the NHS was "underfunded, undermined and under threat". They also called the new GP contracts "
Stalinist". A March 1990 opinion poll commissioned by the BMA showed that 73% believed that the NHS was not safe in Conservative hands. There were allegations that fundholders received more funding than non-fundholders, creating a two-tier system. GP fundholding was abolished by Labour in 1997 and replaced by Primary Care Groups. According to
John Campbell, by "the mid-1990s the NHS was treating more patients, more efficiently than in the 1980s...the system was arguably better managed and more accountable than before". Clarke has been the subject of criticism over the decades for his responsibility for the
contaminated blood scandal. It was the largest loss-of-life disaster in Britain since the 1950s and claimed the lives of thousands of
haemophiliacs.
Theresa May ordered a
public inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal in July 2017. In July 2021, Clarke gave oral evidence to the inquiry with his demeanour being widely branded "arrogant, pompous and contemptuous" by the press. It was reported that he argued with inquiry counsel, refused to apologise and at one point even walked out while the chairman,
Sir Brian Langstaff, was speaking. The
MSF trade union claimed that Clarke's exclusion of NHS medical laboratory staff from the pay review body in 1984 led to massive staff shortages and a crisis in medical laboratory testing by 1999.
Later ministerial positions Just over two years later he was appointed
Secretary of State for Education and Science in the final weeks of Thatcher's Government, following
Norman Tebbit's unwillingness to return to Cabinet following the resignation of
Geoffrey Howe. Clarke was the first Cabinet Minister to advise Thatcher to resign after her victory in the first round of the November 1990
leadership contest was less than the 15% winning margin required to prevent a second ballot; she referred to him in her memoirs as a
candid friend: "his manner was robust in the brutalist style he has cultivated: the candid friend". Clarke came to work with John Major very closely, and quickly emerged as a central figure in his government. After continuing as Education Secretary (1990–92), where he introduced a number of reforms, he was appointed as
Home Secretary in the wake of the Conservatives' victory at the
1992 general election. In May 1993, seven months after the impact of "
Black Wednesday" had damaged
Norman Lamont's credibility as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Major sacked Lamont and appointed Clarke in his place.
Chancellor of the Exchequer At first, Clarke was seen as the dominant figure in Cabinet, and at the October 1993 Conservative Party Conference he defended Major from his critics by pronouncing "any enemy of John Major is an enemy of mine." In the party leadership contest of 1995, when John Major beat
John Redwood, Clarke kept faith in Major and commented: "I don't think the Conservative Party could win an election in 1,000 years on this ultra right-wing programme". Clarke enjoyed an increasingly successful record as Chancellor, as the economy recovered from the recession of the early 1990s and a new monetary policy was put into effect after Black Wednesday. He reduced the basic rate of income tax from 25% to 23%, reduced UK Government spending as a percentage of GDP, and reduced the budget deficit from £50.8 billion in 1993 to £15.5 billion in 1997. Clarke's successor, the
Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown, continued these policies, which eliminated the deficit by 1998 and allowed Brown to record a budget surplus for the following four years. Interest rates, inflation and unemployment all fell during Clarke's tenure at
HM Treasury. Clarke's success was such that Brown felt he had to pledge to keep to Clarke's spending plans and these limits remained in place for the first two years of the Labour Government that was elected in 1997. Clarke, writing in 2016 after the
Brexit Referendum, comments that he and Heseltine later agreed that they had separately decided to give way because of the pressure Major was under, and that the referendum pledge "was the biggest single mistake" of their careers, giving "legitimacy" to such a device. When Tory Party Chairman,
Brian Mawhinney, was understood to have briefed against him, Clarke declared: "tell your kids to get their scooters off my lawn" – an allusion to
Harold Wilson's rebuke of Trades Union leader
Hugh Scanlon in the late 1960s.
Role as a backbencher After the Conservatives entered opposition in 1997, Clarke contested the leadership of the Party for the first time. In
1997, the electorate being solely Tory Members of Parliament, he topped the poll in the first and second rounds. In the third and final round he formed an alliance with Eurosceptic John Redwood, who would have become
Shadow Chancellor and Clarke's deputy, were he to have won the contest. However, Thatcher endorsed Clarke's rival
William Hague, who proceeded to win the election comfortably. The contest was criticised for not involving the rank-and-file members of the Party, where surveys showed Clarke to be more popular. Clarke rejected the offer from Hague of a Shadow Cabinet role, opting instead to return to the
backbenches. Clarke contested the party leadership for a second time in
2001. Despite opinion polls again showing he was the most popular Conservative politician with the British public, He was accused by
Norman Tebbit of being "lazy" whilst leadership rival
Malcolm Rifkind suggested that Clarke's pro-European views could have divided the Conservative Party had Clarke won. In the event, Clarke was eliminated in the first round of voting by Conservative MPs. Eventual winner David Cameron appointed Clarke to head a Democracy Task Force as part of his extensive 18-month policy review in December 2005, exploring issues such as the reform of the
House of Lords and party funding. Clarke is President of the
Tory Reform Group, a liberal,
pro-European ginger group within the Conservative Party. Clarke became known as "an
economic and
social liberal, an internationalist and a strong supporter of the
European idea". In 2006, he described Cameron's plans for a British Bill of Rights as "
xenophobic and
legal nonsense".
Parliamentary expenses scandal On 12 May 2009,
The Daily Telegraph reported that Clarke had "flipped" his
Council Tax. He had told the Parliamentary authorities that his main home was in the Rushcliffe constituency, enabling him to claim a second-home allowance on his London residence, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill for Council Tax due on that property. However, he told
Rushcliffe Borough Council in Nottinghamshire that he spent so little time at his constituency address that his wife Gillian should qualify for a 25% Council Tax (single person's) discount, saving the former Chancellor around £650 per year. Land Registry records showed that Clarke no longer had a mortgage on his Nottinghamshire home where he has lived since 1987. Instead he held a mortgage on his London property, which was being charged to the taxpayer at £480 per month.
Return to the frontbench In 2009, Clarke became Shadow Business Secretary in Opposition to the then-
Business Secretary,
Peter Mandelson. David Cameron flattered Clarke as about the only one able to challenge Mandelson and Brown's economic credibility. Two days later it emerged that Clarke had warned in a speech a month earlier that
President Barack Obama could see David Cameron as a "
right-wing nationalist" if the Conservatives maintained Eurosceptic policies and that Obama would "start looking at whoever is in Germany or France if we start being
isolationist". The
Financial Times said "Clarke has in effect agreed to disagree with the Tories' official Eurosceptic line".
Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary On 12 May 2010, Clarke's appointment as
Secretary of State for Justice and
Lord Chancellor was announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in the
Coalition Government formed between the Conservative and
Liberal Democrat parties. James Macintyre, political editor of
Prospect, argued that in this ministerial role he had instigated a process of radical reform. In June 2010, Clarke signalled an end to short prison sentences after warning it was "virtually impossible" to rehabilitate any inmate in less than 12 months. In his first major speech after taking office, Clarke indicated a major shift in penal policy by saying prison was not effective in many cases. This could result in more offenders being handed community sentences. Clarke, who described the current prison population of 85,000 as "astonishing", received immediate criticism from some colleagues in a Party renowned for its tough stance on law and order. He signalled that fathers who fail to pay child maintenance, disqualified drivers and criminals fighting asylum refusals could be among the first to benefit and should not be sent to prison. Clarke announced in February 2011 that the Government intended to scrutinise the relationship between the
European Court of Human Rights and national parliaments. In May 2011, controversy related to Clarke's reported views on sentencing for those convicted of rape resurfaced after an interview on the radio station
BBC Radio 5 Live, where he discussed a proposal to increase the reduction of sentences for criminals, including rapists, who pleaded guilty pre-trial, from a third to a half. In the interview he incorrectly asserted that the reason for the low average sentence of those convicted of rape was that legal definition of "rape" in England and Wales included such less serious offences as consensual sex between a 17 year old and a 15 year old. In 2011 and 2012, Clarke faced criticism for his Justice and Security Bill, in particular those aspects of it that allow secret trials when "national security" is at stake.
The Economist stated: "the origins of the proposed legislation lie in civil cases brought by former Guantánamo detainees, the best-known of whom was
Binyam Mohamed, alleging that government intelligence and security agencies (MI6 and MI5) were complicit in their rendition and torture". Prominent civil liberties and human rights campaigners argued: "the worst excesses of the war on terror have been revealed by open courts and a free media. Yet the Justice and Security Green Paper seeks to place Government above the law and would undermine such crucial scrutiny."
Minister without Portfolio Following the 2012 Cabinet reshuffle, Clarke was moved from
Justice Secretary to
Minister without Portfolio. It was also announced that he would assume the role of roving
Trade Envoy with responsibility for promoting British business and trade interests abroad, a position which he enjoyed. In the 2014 Cabinet reshuffle, after more than 20 years serving as a Minister, it was announced that Clarke had stepped down from government, to return to the backbenches. Clarke was honoured as a
Companion of Honour, upon the Prime Minister's recommendation, in July 2014. His total time as a
government minister is the fifth-longest in the modern era after
Winston Churchill,
Arthur Balfour,
Rab Butler, and
the Duke of Devonshire.
Return to the backbenches Clarke was opposed to
Brexit during the
2016 referendum on the United Kingdom's continued
membership of the European Union, and opposed the
holding of the referendum in the first place. He was the sole Conservative MP to vote against the triggering of
Article 50. During the
2016 Conservative leadership election Clarke was interviewed by Sky News on 5 July 2016 and made negative comments to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, about the "fiasco" (leadership contest) and about three of the candidates. In a widely circulated video clip, he referred to
Theresa May as a "bloody difficult woman", joked that
Michael Gove, who was "wild", would "go to war with at least three countries at once" and characterised some of the utterances of
Andrea Leadsom as "extremely stupid". Clarke added that Gove "did us all a favour by getting rid of Boris. The idea of Boris as
prime minister is ridiculous." In February 2017, following the death of
Gerald Kaufman, Clarke succeeded as
Father of the House, continuing after his re-election as an MP at the
2017 general election. In December 2017, Clarke voted along with fellow Conservative
Dominic Grieve and nine other Conservative MPs against the government, and in favour of guaranteeing Parliament a "
meaningful vote" on any
Brexit deal Britain agrees with the European Union. Clarke endorsed
Rory Stewart during the
2019 Conservative leadership election. In September 2019, after Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson lost a number of key votes in the House of Commons, Clarke stated that it would be "not inconceivable" for him to become Prime Minister leading a
government of national unity in order to revoke Article 50 and prevent Brexit. Other politicians who were suggested for such a role at the time included
Harriet Harman, his female counterpart as Mother of the House of Commons. Lib Dem leader
Jo Swinson supported the proposal, though
Boris Johnson and
Jeremy Corbyn, the
Leader of the Opposition, both dismissed the suggestion. As it turned out, a vote of no-confidence was not in fact tabled against Boris Johnson's government and no such government of national unity was formed or took office.
Sitting as an Independent ,
Sir Alan Duncan and
Liam Fox, 19 October 2019 On 3 September 2019, Clarke joined 20 other rebel Conservative MPs to vote against the Conservative government of Boris Johnson. The rebel MPs voted against a Conservative motion which subsequently failed. Effectively, they helped block Johnson's
no-deal Brexit plan from proceeding on 31 October. Subsequently, all 21 were advised that they had lost the Conservative whip and were expelled as Conservative MPs, requiring them to sit as independents. If they decided to run for re-election in a future election, the party would block their selection as Conservative candidates, though Clarke opted not to do so. In an interview on 7 September, Clarke rejected the suggestion that, like other former Conservative MPs, he could join the Liberal Democrats, but noted that, if he were to cast "a protest vote", he would "follow the Conservative tradition of voting Lib Dem." In his capacity as Father of the House, Clarke presided over the House of Commons'
2019 Speakership election. He then retired from the House of Commons at the
2019 general election. Since
Dennis Skinner lost his seat in the election,
Peter Bottomley succeeded as Father of the House.
House of Lords Nominated in early 2020 for elevation to the peerage by Boris Johnson, on 4 September he was created
Baron Clarke of Nottingham,
of West Bridgford in the County of Nottinghamshire. Taking the Conservative Whip, Lord Clarke made his maiden speech on 28 September 2020. ==Corporate, media and other work==