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Ken Clarke Quotes

Kenneth Harry Clarke, Baron Clarke of Nottingham, , is a British politician who served as Home Secretary from 1992 to 1993 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1993 to 1997. A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament for Rushcliffe from 1970 to 2019 and was Father of the House of Commons between 2017 and 2019. The President of the Tory Reform Group since 1997, he is a one-nation conservative who identifies with economically and socially liberal views.

Clarke served in the Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1987 to 1988, Health Secretary from 1988 to 1990, and Education Secretary from 1990 to 1992. He held two of the Great Offices of State as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and 2005—being defeated each time. Opinion polls indicated he was more popular with the general public than with his party, whose generally Eurosceptic stance did not chime with his pro-European views. Under the coalition government of David Cameron, he returned to the Cabinet as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor from 2010 to 2012 and Minister without Portfolio from 2012 to 2014. He was also the United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion from 2010 to 2014.

The Conservative whip was withdrawn from him in September 2019 because he and 20 other MPs voted with the Opposition on a motion; for the remainder of his time in Parliament he sat as an independent, though still on the government benches. He stood down as an MP at the 2019 general election and was thereafter appointed by Boris Johnson as a Conservative Member of the House of Lords in September 2020.

Clarke is President of the Conservative Europe Group, Co-President of the pro-EU body British Influence and Vice-President of the European Movement UK. Described by the press as a 'Big Beast' of British politics, his total time as a minister is the fifth-longest in the modern era. He has spent over 20 years serving under Prime Ministers Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron. He was one of only five ministers to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Thatcher—Major Governments, which represents the longest uninterrupted ministerial service in Britain since Lord Palmerston in the early 19th century. Wikipedia

✵ 2. July 1940

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Famous Ken Clarke Quotes

“No one has officially told me that I have lost the Tory whip. The fault’s probably mine. I’m notorious for only using my mobile phone for outgoing calls: nobody knows my London number and I certainly don’t do anything online. So there may somewhere be an email or text message or something telling me, but I gather from the media that there’s no doubt that I’ve lost the whip. My status otherwise is completely unclear.”

Ken Clarke

Said after Clarke voted against the government on the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill 2017-19. Boris Johnson had promised to remove the Conservative whip from those who rebelled. Quoted by the Guardian. Ken Clarke: ‘I’m not sure yet, but I may protest and vote Lib Dem’ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/ken-clarke-interview-andrew-rawnsley-lost-tory-whip (7 September 2019)
2019

“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.”

Ken Clarke

Said in an interview with Politico, 31 December 2018 on the revoking of Article 50 to allow time for preparation of the UK's exit of the European Union. McTague, Tom (31 December 2018) Ken Clarke: My ‘complacent’ generation sowed seeds of populism https://www.politico.eu/article/ken-clarke-interview-brexit-populism-tories/ in Politico. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
2018

“When we negotiate trade agreements in the future, we will be pressing other countries to open up their public procurement processes to genuine, fair, international competition. It would be totally ridiculous to abandon that principle now to give into not only constituency pressures, which I understand, but otherwise nationalist nonsense that ought to be ignored.”

Ken Clarke

Speech https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-03-26/debates/C8342F96-62B1-40CC-AB4A-03AFBC46ACBB/UKPassportContract#contribution-8F9BEBCD-C76E-4950-A915-40D5123A853E in the House of Commons (26 March 2018) on the awarding of the contract for the production of new UK passports to Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto
2018