LONDON — Ken Clarke was in a reflective mood.

“I’m a member of the 1990s establishment,” the veteran Conservative Party MP said, sitting at the desk of his parliamentary office in London, looking out over sweeping views of Westminster Bridge and the River Thames. “We were very pleased with ourselves for setting up the great normality.”

That world has gone, said Clarke, 78. Populism is everywhere.

“We were complacent."

Clarke is a genuine “big beast” of Westminster, the longest serving MP — or father of the House — and perennial nominee in the “best prime minister who never was” stakes. Under Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron he served as home secretary, chancellor, health secretary and justice secretary.

“It’s not just the British where this woeful state of affairs exists" — Ken Clarke

From the backbenches, he now watches as the world he helped build crumbles around him.

“The Americans have got Trump, we’ve got Brexit and the French have got Yellow Jackets,” he said. “It’s not just the British [sic] where this woeful state of affairs exists.”

Fueling it all are the left-behinds, he said, who did not benefit from the boom time of the 1990s and 2000s and then were forced to pay for the 2008 crash.

If Clarke was back in government he would be advocating the kind of reforms the Yellow Jackets forced upon Emmanuel Macron — tax breaks and welfare increases to ease people’s cost of living.

But the solution, he said, has to be more radical that that "temporary patch."

“It’s about how do we regulate capitalism to prevent excess.” Not a typical Tory message.

“People like me who are supporters of capitalism and free markets have got to stop being as complacent as we were when we put this international rules-based system together in the 1990s,” he said. “The next generation have got to work out how to make it work fairly and still work properly to stop these surges in populist discontent.”

While nowhere is immune, Britain is in a particularly dire place, according to Clarke.

“The decision to hold a referendum, and the result of the referendum, is the most disastrous series of events in domestic politics in my political lifetime,” he said. “At the moment, we have a dysfunctional government, a dysfunctional opposition and a very angry and very polarized public opinion."

“This is very dangerous, it could create some opportunities for some right-wing populist movement or some ultra-left-wing populist movement ... to surge through and start knocking the established parties aside, which would be a disastrous turn of events.”

On Brexit, Clarke said he is impressed by the prime minister’s fortitude, but maintains she is heading for a crash by prioritizing Tory unity.

Clarke hates referendums and opposes a second as much as he did the first.

“The only solution in parliament is a cross-party appeal,” he said. “They [No. 10 Downing Street] are still going back to thinking the secret lies with the DUP [the Democratic Unionist Party] — that if you get those it will be all right. They won’t get the DUP and I don’t think that’s right. You’ve got to put together some cross-party majority to at least get us into a transition. It was always obvious.”

Theresa May is unlikely to be able to do it, though, he said. Could anyone? “It's hard to see who the personality is on either side who is able to do that.”

Clarke thinks May missed her chance. “I don’t think there’s time now.”

While the Brexiteers have seemingly turned against any deal with Brussels, Labour MPs now appear to have resolved to block Brexit altogether in a second referendum.

Clarke believes both sides are irresponsible.

"Some of my normal political allies, hardcore Remainers like me ... seem to believe they can oppose it, cause a chaotic crisis, and that will cause another referendum, which might reverse the result," he said.

Clarke hates referendums and opposes a second as much as he did the first.

“The purpose of a referendum is to get round a parliamentary majority to make parliament irrelevant. Mussolini was brilliant at using them,” he said. A second referendum is “a crazy way of trying to resolve” the current impasse.

He said he will vote for May's deal, though he accepts it’s probably not going to get through the Commons.

Since the U.K. is "not ready" to leave, Clarke advocates revoking Article 50 to buy more time. "If a Brexiteer majority still wishes to persist in leaving, once we have made some progress and it’s obvious we’re getting there, you can invoke Article 50 again and leave fairly rapidly. To me, that seems the only rational way in which we can precede. But common sense has gone out of the window.”

So what will happen?

“Anybody who claims they know what is going to happen is wasting your time,” he said.

What about his own future — a seat in the House of Lords perhaps? “What other country would make you a legislator at the age of 80?” he said, laughing. "I wouldn’t turn it down. A secure parking space in the middle of London would be very valuable. If anyone offered me one, I’m sure I’d find it irresistible.”