Some time ago, I put money at long odds on Jeremy Hunt becoming leader. He is now a favourite, but by no means a certainty

Several years ago, I was surprised to receive an invitation from an aide of Sir John Major to meet the former prime minister.

When I arrived at his South London office, not far from Brixton where he was brought up, he poured out his heart.

He said he believed the Conservative Party that he loved and of which he’d been a member for almost 60 years was being hijacked by ‘bigots’.

Decent people, he added, should come together to save the Tories.

I listened politely but dismissed his interpretation, as it was coming from a man who had been very badly scarred by the revolt of anti-EU Tories — whom he’d memorably described as ‘b*****ds’ — which did so much to wreck his premiership.

Since then I have changed my mind.

I now recognise that Major had wisely identified something which has gone on to fester in the Tory Party ever since he lost power in 1997. The boil burst this week, with Theresa May forced to fall on her sword because today’s equivalents of Major’s ‘bigots’ have refused to approve her EU exit deal as a result of their bovine hatred of the Brussels-based superstate.

All this means we are facing the sixth Tory leadership election since Major stepped down. Will the ebullient Boris Johnson win? Or the cautiously pragmatic Jeremy Hunt? Perhaps the young thruster Tom Tugendhat? Or the unashamedly ambitious Sajid Javid?

But whoever succeeds Mrs May, they will not be the solution to the Party’s woes. Much more important is for Tory MPs and Party workers to ask themselves a rather bigger question.What kind of political organisation do they want to be?

Do they want to uphold the broad-based Conservatism which can be traced back to Disraeli and was championed by Stanley Baldwin and Harold Macmillan? (John Major is part of that One Nation tradition.)

Do they want to follow the rightwards path pursued to no avail by William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith?

All this means we are facing the sixth Tory leadership election since Major stepped down. Will the ebullient Boris Johnson win? Or the cautiously pragmatic Jeremy Hunt? Perhaps the young thruster Tom Tugendhat? Or the unashamedly ambitious Sajid Javid?

Or do they want to be an ideologically rigid pressure group with a fanatical supporter base, but which doesn’t have roots in wider society?

The latter course is the one blithely taken by Jeremy Corbyn. His Labour Party may have record numbers of passionate members — especially among the young — yet it finds it very hard to achieve poll ratings higher than 40 per cent from the wider public.

The Tories must learn the lesson from watching Corbyn’s far-Left Momentum outriders hijack a party which was once led by visionaries and moderates such as Clement Attlee, Labour’s greatest prime minister.

Lords must prove their value Hats off to Lord Ravensdale for winning the hereditary peers’ by-election. The 36-year-old engineer and great-grandson of fascist leader Oswald Mosley will now sit in the Upper House as a crossbench peer. Six rival candidates got no votes at all. During Lord Ravensdale’s previous three attempts, one of those who beat him was the 19th Earl of Devon (a barrister who’s married to an American actress and owns 600-year-old Powderham Castle in Devon). Since his election last July, the Earl of Devon has not spoken in the House, hasn’t asked a single question and has only voted once. Last week, the Lords shamefully stymied a bill to abolish these antiquated by-elections which are a hangover from Tony Blair’s botched reform of the Second Chamber. Until such processes are brought up to date, at least Lord Ravensdale has the opportunity to prove his value, unlike so many drab drudges appointed though the patronage of party leaders. Advertisement

For the alternative is very dangerous. Recent events suggest that we could be witnessing a process which reminds me of the nightmare scenario set out to me by John Major.

The Conservative Party is increasingly being dominated, certainly at a grassroots level, by a highly organised and motivated group of doctrinaire hardliners.

Like Militant Tendency 30 years ago, personified by Derek Hatton and which tried to launch a coup against Neil Kinnock’s Labour, these Right-wing ideologues are intent on driving out Tory members whose views they don’t like.

One example of this is the attempt to deselect Nick Boles, MP for Margaret Thatcher’s home town of Grantham. His sin? The former Remainer is considered too soft on Brexit as he has been seeking a ‘Norway-style’ exit from the EU.

Another parallel between the Tories and Labour is the way both parties are riddled in some sections with bigotry towards religious minorities. For Corbyn, it is the virus of anti-Semitism. For the Tories, it pains me to report, it is the virus of Islamophobia.

It goes without saying that there should be no room for this kind of hatred in any modern political party. So in which direction should the Tories go now? I hope the Party will take the path of decency and moderation.

That said, who is best suited to be the next leader?

In no particular order, I’ll start with Amber Rudd. She’s a capable politician who has been a decent Cabinet minister. But her pro-EU views would make her too much of a divisive figure and scare off pro-Brexit voters. The opposite is the case with hardline Leavers Boris Johnson, Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg. But I think their hopes of the top job are fatally tainted because they are too fanatical.

Unforgiveably, Johnson compared Mrs May’s deal to a ‘suicide vest around the British constitution’.

Raab stupidly claimed that the Withdrawal Agreement was ‘even worse’ than staying in the EU.

Rees-Mogg said the deal meant that Britain would become an impotent vassal state of the EU.

The trio finally backed Mrs May yesterday, but their disloyalty up to that point has made them politicians who do not deserve to be taken seriously.

Just as important, any one of them as Tory leader could not command the support of the population at large and would, I’m sure, deliver the keys to No. 10 to Corbyn in an election landslide.

In my view, the next Tory leader must come from the Centre of the party.

It is a shame that Chancellor Philip Hammond is so bland. Otherwise he would be a steady-the-ship candidate.

The TWO ministers with the best chance are Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Some time ago, I put money at long odds on Mr Hunt becoming leader. He is now a favourite, but by no means a certainty.

Such is the current chaos that the field is open for someone talented from the younger generation of politicians to come through the ranks and show that they can end the rancid sectarianism which has done such damage to the Party.

Mrs May’s resignation offers the chance for the Tory Party to reinvent itself as the wholesome organisation it once was and which is capable of being trusted by families across all four countries of the United Kingdom.

The Party is fast running out of time to do this. Otherwise the Tories will see Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister within weeks.

Theresa May has been brought down by treachery and intrigue but prime minister Harold Wilson suffered worse.

In his newly published autobiography, Kick ’Em Back, his press secretary Joe Haines tells how the No. 10 doctor offered to ‘dispose’ of the PM’s troublesome aide, Marcia Falkender. He said he could do it ‘in such a way that her death would seem like natural causes’. The physician would then sign the death certificate and ‘that would not be a problem’.

Haines, 91, says he turned down the offer, of course.