Ken and the art of the stylish u-turn

---

He may be the latest minister to have joined the ranks of the government u-turners, but Kenneth Clarke today gave the impression of having merely veered ever so slightly to the right.

Was he given a stern warning by the prime minister and told to drop his plans for shorter sentences for guilty pleas?

Impossible to tell – Clarke, though looking as dishevelled as ever, appeared to be decidedly unruffled as he wandered into the Commons chamber.

Would he even care if his ideas have been unceremoniously shelved at the prime minister’s insistence? Probably not – after all, Ken Clarke has been an MP since David Cameron was a toddler and has seen most of this before.

Had he bowed to the demands of the right wing media? Yes, probably in part, but he did a very good impression of a man who had simply decided to change his mind at the time of his own choosing.

For where the awkward re-adjustments of some of his colleagues – such as Andrew Lansley, who arrived to support the plight of a fellow minister left to face the music by Downing Street – has been accompanied by the screeching of rubber and a narrowly avoided accident, Clarke shuffled to the Despatch box, raised the issue of discounted sentences for early guilty pleas, and casually admitted that “we couldn’t make that work so have decided to return to the present system”.

Simple. No apology, no u-turn, no awkward slamming of the brakes, just a clear demonstration, said Clarke, that “we run a collective government…this is what consultation is all about.”

Sadiq Khan, Clarke’s Labour shadow, fumbled his way through an attempt to paint Clarke as a victim of the prime minister’s last minute order to drop his proposals for early guilty pleas.

“I said I thought it would survive because with some judicial discretion I thought you could solve the problem – you can’t” Clarke replied dismissively, leaving Khan silenced in the process.

In a peculiarly worded intervention, John Bercow, the speaker, returned to the u-turn theme, reminding Clarke “in a jocular fashion ... that he shouldn't be like a cruise ship in rotation.”

Clarke looked as surprised as he ever can – which isn’t very much. “The House wishes to hear him”, Bercow continued. “He swivels throughout. It would be helpful if he could face the House”.

Ken Clarke has almost definitely never been compared to cruise ship before, but the mention of his swivelling hips give him an opportunity to cruise at will.

“The problem in my career is I haven’t swivelled enough on occasions” Clarke declared, all sides of the House now laughing merrily.

When Labour backbencher Stephen McCabe unsubtly asked the justice secretary what it felt like to be on probation, Clarke happily replied: “I've been on probation for about the last few decades. Sooner or later I'll get the hang of it. Most of my colleagues envy my ability to get into the headlines."

For man who was last week depicted as a Teletubby on the front page of The Sun with the headline ‘Time for Tubby Bye Bye', he looked astonishingly relaxed.

“I have some very curious opponents in sections of the media” Clarke continued, almost turning his statement into a one-man stage show: “How to be an MP for Nearly Five Decades – and Survive.”

U-turns, he advised newcomer David Nuttall, should be performed with “purpose and panache when you have to do them” – before quickly reminding MPs that this was not, of course, a u-turn.

With the majority of MPs now enjoying the show and the Labour opposition having long given up on any attempt to make Clarke feel vulnerable – it’s impossible to think he ever has - it took a handful of angry Tories to try and remind the justice secretary where he went wrong.

Edward Leigh demanded to now what Clarke meant when he talked of “drug-free wings” on prisons; there were, said Clarke, lots of drugs in prisons.

Philip Davies, whose favoured approach to sentencing is probably of the lock-em-up-and-throw-away-all-keys, congratulated Clarke for “rowing back” on the more damaging proposals and urging him to accept the “right wing” argument of involving the private sector in running prisons.

Clarke thanked him for support.

Bill Cash grumbled about “wishy washy liberals”.

But with Liberal Democrats in the room were largely quiet, and any Labour MPs completely silenced, Clarke was hardly going to be troubled by a few grumbles from Tories.

He’s no cruise ship, but it’s hard to think of another minister executing a u-turn with quite such stylish command as Ken Clarke.

Sam Macrory is political editor of The House Magazine.