In this limbo dance of lunacy between Hunt and Johnson, there is no answer to how low they can go

In all the captivating drama of the Tory leadership race, an announcement from a gnarly veteran of contests past went barely noticed.

Kenneth Clarke revealed that he is minded to retire at the next general election. He admits the temptation to continue, and might change his mind. But at 78, after almost half a century in the House of Commons, the old boy seems to have had his fill – and who can blame him for that?

This poignant news took me back to an interview with him in 2005, by which point he’d already been beaten in two leadership elections. Suspecting he’d have a third crack after the Tories lost the imminent election, I took him to dinner.

When he ordered steamed spinach with his Dover sole, I urged him to add a side order of chips. “But I don’t want chips,” he said. “You’re Kenneth Clarke,” I reminded him, “of course you want chips.” “I do not,” he reiterated with added emphasis, “want any bloody chips.”

There was the official confirmation I was after. Evidently he’d put himself on the mandatory pre-campaign diet of the portly leadership wannabe (see Boris Johnson circa 2018, et al).

Within a couple of months, Clarke was back on the chips after adding a loss to David Cameron to the one in 1997 to William Hague; and the other four years later (“Mm,” he said with spinach-flavoured chagrin, “that one does give me the odd sleepless night...”) to Iain Duncan Smith.

It’s a little late to be regretting the trio of defeats to mesmerisingly inferior rivals, or speculating about the different path British history might have taken had he won any of them.

But it isn’t too late for Clarke to make one final contribution to how it develops from here.

The contest he describes as “a tragic farce” has descended, predictably enough, into a no-deal Dutch auction. Whatever one bids, the other counters with a lower offer.

If Johnson announced at 9am tomorrow that under him Britain will pay a maximum of £0.00 of the legally agreed divorce settlement, by lunchtime Hunt would insist that under him the EU27 must pay us the £39bn to leave.

If he added that the Spanish will have to give us their stockpile of acorn-fed iberico pigs to sweeten the no deal, Johnson would issue a teatime demand for the Trevi Fountain, The Little Mermaid and every tulip in Amsterdam.

Timed for the 10pm bulletins, Hunt’s response would be a vow to send a gunboat to Croatia’s Adriatic coastline to collect the walled town of Dubrovnik, and tow it to Felixstowe for use as a holiday resort for exhausted fisherman.

In a tough midnight counterstrike, Johnson would pledge to target a Trident missile on Boulogne, hinting vaguely at the use of “technology” to divert the resulting nuclear cloud to the Iberian peninsula.

Johnson’s best idea of restoring parliamentary sovereignty, he claims, is to bypass parliament entirely in order to leave by Halloween. Hunt’s notion of illustrating how splendidly self-reliant the post-Brexit Britain will be is to hire a former Canadian PM as his chief Brexit negotiator.

In this limbo dance of lunacy, there is no answer to how low they can go.

In another era, Ken Clarke thrice ran for the leadership without compromising himself. He knew his fondness for the EU would damage his chances, if not obliterate them.

But he didn’t manufacture two sets of opinions, and stack them side by side in contradictory columns before deciding which to file to the Telegraph. He didn’t start by arguing for a second referendum and a permanent customs union, and end by ruling out a second referendum and staying in a customs union.

He refused to tell the electorate what he knew it wanted to hear. He told it what he believed, and so he kept losing.

I’ve no idea whether he reckons his integrity a price worth paying for the path his party took under other leaders.

But towering over the shadows of two pygmy charlatans who will say anything to appeal to the Tory membership, he looks a larger beast than ever to anyone who recalls his trinity of failures.

He may still have his chance to alter the course of history. A dozen or so Tory MPs have said they will bring down the government to avoid the no-deal catastrophe. For reasons not unconnected with cowardice, careerism and the desire for an income, most will renege on that. The Tories under Johnson will be a nauseating replica of the Republicans under Trump.

But even with the continuing support of the DUP, assuming it graciously accepts another billion quid or two to renew the deal, the government’s majority is three.

All it would take to bring it down is for two of them to join the opposition parties in a vote of no confidence. Dominic Grieve can probably be trusted to have the courage of his convictions. Ken Clarke most certainly can.

Assuming he decided not to stand in the ensuing general election, it would be the last contribution of a career in which he held more cabinet posts over a longer period than any other modern parliamentarian. It would be his most significant.

Age hasn’t withered Ken Clarke. He’s still big (it’s the politics that got small), and he deserves his glorious swansong.