Last week, the veteran parliamentarian was the only Tory to vote against triggering article 50, his passionate pro-Europe speech making him an unlikely hero of the remain left. So how bad does he think Brexit could be? ‘A historic disaster,’ he says

Eighteen hours after betraying the will of the British people (© several newspapers) by voting against triggering article 50, Ken Clarke is sitting at his paper-stacked desk in his small parliamentary office, ploughing through the government’s white paper that supposedly lays out more details of its plans for departure.

It’s a little more than an hour since David Davis, the Brexit secretary, made a statement to the Commons and published the document online, and Clarke, having secured a paper copy, has only got as far as page 10. He wasn’t in the Commons but watched the brief statement and responses on TV. What did he make of it? “It’s quite obvious that nobody could think of what to ask because nobody has had a chance to read it,” he says.

Does he see that as intentional? “I’m afraid I do. The government are going to extraordinary lengths to try to avoid being accountable to parliament, when – because of the referendum – they have a completely inbuilt majority of people on both sides [who] regard themselves as entirely locked in by the referendum result to support them.

“It leads me to the unworthy suspicion that they don’t have a clear policy that they have agreed on, so they are trying to minimise its exposure.”

Clarke has never minced his words when it comes to Brexit – or indeed much else – and last week was no exception. In a speech to the Commons during the two-day debate on article 50, the mechanism that will start the process of leaving the EU, the man described by the Daily Telegraph as “the last parliamentary big beast” thrilled those still wedded to the remain cause by making a passionate argument for ignoring the referendum result altogether and staying firmly in.

The promises of riches after Britain departs were Alice in Wonderland fantasies, he told MPs. “Apparently you follow the rabbit down a hole and you emerge in a wonderland where suddenly countries around the world are queueing up to give us trading advantages and access to their markets that previously we have never been able to achieve as part of the EU.

“Nice men” such as Presidents Trump and Erdoğan of Turkey – both of whom were visited by the prime minister last month – were impatient to do deals with us despite their history of protectionism. “No doubt somewhere there is a hatter holding a tea party with a dormouse in the teapot.”

In stark contrast to Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer, who almost visibly writhed as he was forced to explain why, despite being a passionately pro-European party, Labour was whipping its MPs to vote in favour, Clarke cheerfully declared that his conscience was clear. “When we see what unfolds after we leave the EU, I hope the consciences of other members of parliament remain equally content.”

As he sat, he was applauded and cheered from the opposition benches – the first time, he says, he has ever been clapped in 47 years as an MP (“you’re not supposed to be applauded at all”). Writing in this newspaper the following day, Polly Toynbee declared the speech “magnificent” and its author “a prophet crying in the wilderness”, “too good” for the Tories. The Daily Telegraph’s Michael Deacon joked that he was “the leader of the opposition”.

Though he scoffs “This week!” when I mention that he finds himself a hero of the remain left, Clarke is clearly chuffed with the fanmail he has been getting – most of it, he says, from Labour voters. “All political careers are a rollercoaster,” he says, but “it is nice to have a week with some fans. It’s quite obvious that some of the 16 million [who voted to remain] were much bucked by the fact that somebody was still being as obdurate as I was and refusing to see why on earth they should all be abandoned. Actually, I think the 16 million were right.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Clarke with Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher at the Tory party conference, 1985. Photograph: Brian Harris / Rex Features

Liberals and leftwingers may warm to Clarke’s position on Europe and enjoy his tendencies to blunt speech. However, far from being a closet leftie, he is a small-government Tory, hawkish on public spending. Although he didn’t flee from parliament when his 16 years in Conservative governments were roundly trashed by the electorate in 1997, he admits that he used the next few years to double-up with a “very busy business career”, most notoriously with the tobacco giant British American Tobacco.

On trade, he says: “I basically think you cannot put new trading barriers between yourself and the giant free trade area upon which we have been dependent for the past 30 years without making yourself poorer.

“I don’t want to fall into the [trap] of wandering around, positively welcoming gloom and disaster, so as to be able to say: ‘I told you so.’ But I actually do think it will make us poorer. It could be a historic disaster.” How bad is historic? “If it turns out to be at some enormous cost and it brings an end to international investment in quite a lot of sectors of the economy, then of course it could be a disaster.”

Ken Clarke was magnificent, defying the Brexit zealots | Polly Toynbee Read more

In addition, there is the political cost, he says. “Every US president until the present one has found us more valuable because we are the leading bridge into the EU. We carry clout because we are one of the two or three big members of the EU. We are giving all that up as well. We are a trading nation and we have political interests in all parts of the world, where we will find our voice and our clout substantially diminished. I don’t think President Putin will bother to pick up the phone to Theresa May if he’s busy. We don’t matter so much any more.”

On the US president, he is not wildly impressed by the results of May’s visit to Washington. “Well, they [the government] have got this slogan about a global Britain, so obviously they want to illustrate this by having good photo-opportunities with leading figures around the world. So I suppose they thought it was quite a political coup to finally land this first meeting with him. But it’s a mixed blessing because we happen to have a rather unpleasant and highly unpredictable American president.”

Clarke and May have some form – he was recorded calling her a “bloody difficult woman” shortly after the referendum, and the pair clashed at the Tory conference in 2011 when May said in her speech that an immigrant had avoided deportation because he had a pet cat, which Clarke immediately and publicly declared was nonsense.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I don’t want to fall into the [trap] of wandering around, positively welcoming gloom and disaster’ … Clarke at his office in Portcullis House. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

In fact, he says: “I am trying to minimise giving you opportunities to attack Theresa, because there is no one else at the moment capable of being prime minister, and it’s not her fault.” But, he adds aridly: “As a PR advantage, going to see President Trump and President Erdoğan as her first two highly publicised calls showed the limitations of the new global politics.”

As for Trump, “It’s possible that for some reason he wants to have a trade deal with us while he’s busy repudiating deals with everybody else but I don’t ... think ... so.”

MPs’ offices in Portcullis House, next to the Houses of Parliament, are not grand – many look out on to a wall – but Clarke’s is blessed with surely one of the best views in London, that of buses, cyclists and pedestrians scurrying over Westminster Bridge. Today he is wearing a blue shirt, bright maroon cords, his trademark scuffed brown suede loafers and an exuberantly patterned burgundy tie that wraps itself determinedly around his belly, until his assistant pops over to straighten it for the photographs. He takes up a perch in a squashy green chair, hands flopping over the arms. Behind his right shoulder is a framed photograph of Churchill in exactly the same pose.

Clarke is 76 now, but not quite the father of the house – Labour’s Gerald Kaufman holds that distinction; they have both been MPs since 1970, Clarke missing out only because Kaufman was sworn in first. One might imagine this to be a depressing week for the lifelong, passionately devoted pro-European, watching Britain’s connection fray irrevocably and finding himself the only Conservative to vote against the bill’s second reading. The MP, however, is every bit as jolly and upbeat as his reputation.

He must have been disappointed that he was the only Tory to vote against the bill, given the fact that he insists most of them believe he is right that Brexit is bad for the country. He gives a long, uncommitted mmmmmm. “Obviously I’d prefer others to join me but frankly it didn’t make any difference to me. I realise it puts me in a rather distinct position, which doesn’t bother me.”

Clarke has served in every Conservative-led government since 1979 except the current one, and in all that time – as Thatcher’s health and education secretaries, Major’s home secretary and chancellor, and as justice secretary and minister without portfolio under Cameron – his devotion to the European project has never wavered, putting him frequently at odds with much of his party. He advocated Britain joining the euro, and has said he still believes it would have been a good idea, had countries such as Italy and Portugal not been allowed to join.

Behind that, principally, has been his commitment to free-market economics, which he insists is as strong as ever.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘No one else is capable of being prime minister at the moment, it’s not her fault’ … Clarke with Theresa May at the Tory party conference, 2009 Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA Archive/PA Images

Clarke will acknowledge that there is “unfortunately” more anti-immigration sentiment in the country than previously, but he feels the referendum result was not principally about immigration. “I think it was mounting anger about economic inequality, the unfair distribution of the rewards of economic success, the gap between different parts of the country, with London and the south-east having a booming economy, and nothing happening in some of the old industrial cities of the north and the north midlands.”

And will he accept that some of that is the fault of governments in which he served? He looks momentarily surprised. “Yes ... I think everybody who believes in liberal economic policies – which is the great bulk of politicians of the past few years – have never quite solved the problem of how to distribute the benefits better, so that the whole country can be seen to benefit.

“We’ve been trying for years” – he was, he points out, Margaret Thatcher’s inner cities minister. “It all goes back to that time, and actually I think we’re still not sure how to do it. We go through a period of rapid economic growth, and if you ask the question – How is this going to benefit Hartlepool? – I can’t pretend I know, and I don’t think I have met anybody who knows. Right and left. I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn has the foggiest notion how to spend the benefits of London’s prosperity either.”

The logical conclusion, if he is correct, that his cherished free-market economics have in part brought about the end of Britain’s European dalliance, does not appear to dent his cheer either.

Clarke announced last year that the current parliament will be his last. He must have some personal sadness that he is ending his career with Britain’s withdrawal? “I go on. I’m usually quite a bouncy, optimistic fellow, and I’ve seen some fair old crises in my time. And somehow, such is the nature of the human condition, things seem to muddle through.” Although, he adds immediately: “I’ve never seen anything as mad or chaotic as this.”

Is he confident, now, that the risk of an early election is receding, and he’ll make it to 2020? “I have no idea. Nobody does. The truth is, when I go to business audiences, they always ask me what is going to happen, and I always begin with the disclaimer: ‘If you actually encounter any person who says that he or she can predict what is going to happen in the next 12 months, then he or she is by definition an idiot.’

“Because there isn’t anybody who knows what is going to happen in the next 12 months, from Theresa May downwards. We’ve never been here before. Things are out of control ... I have never seen a situation like it.”