Leadership Quote by Kenneth Clarke

Clarke’s line is the kind of political understatement that doubles as a warning shot. “My sense is” cushions the claim in plausible deniability, but it also signals a seasoned operator reading the room: he’s not offering a personal gripe, he’s hinting at a silent caucus. The phrase “the majority of Conservatives” is doing the heavy lifting, reframing his reservations as mainstream Conservative unease rather than a dissenting faction’s moral panic. It’s an attempt to launder critique through party legitimacy.

The real charge is smuggled into “how we got into Iraq.” Clarke isn’t litigating the abstract case for removing Saddam; he’s pointing at process, evidence, and decision-making culture: the intelligence claims, the presentation of certainty, the speed with which skepticism was treated as disloyalty. That’s a safer criticism inside a party built on discipline. It lets him imply mismanagement, even manipulation, without sounding like he’s rooting against the war once troops are deployed.

Context matters: British Conservatism in the Iraq era was boxed in. Labour’s Tony Blair owned the intervention, but the political and media machinery behind it spread responsibility across Westminster. Clarke, a prominent pro-European “One Nation” Conservative, often positioned himself as the adult in a party prone to ideological thrill rides. Here he’s staking that role again: casting Iraq not just as a policy failure, but as a cautionary tale about executive overreach and the premium politics places on certainty over scrutiny.