THE YOUNGEST Tory leader for 200 years, William Hague has a man's job to do - that of uniting a dejected and divided party and winning power.

He will have a hard struggle to do the former and, with the stance he has taken, is on a nigh-impossible mission with the other.

For though emerging, surprisingly, as a decisive winner over his rival, former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke, it has to be recalled that he is the choice of 92 Tory MPs rather than of the party as a whole.

The clear evidence was that the excluded and largely-ignored grass roots of the party wanted a leader from the centre ground - the experienced Mr Clarke.

Instead, they have had chosen for them a tyro with fewer than 10 years' parliamentary experience - albeit encompassing a meteoric rise to Cabinet level - who, for all his claims to represent the full breadth of Toryism, now drags the party firmly to the right.

The Tories were already scarred with self-inflicted wounds over Europe; their divisions led them to slaughter at the general election.

And now, in choosing a leader who rules out the single European currency for at least ten years and will tie the Shadow Cabinet to that stance, the Tories have become the party of the Euro-sceptics - the very group who waged the civil war that lost them power.

That has only given the party a further rightward lurch when power and unity are found on the centre ground. That is where - from the left - Tony Blair took Labour and gained both.

If, then, the Tories have not erred by going in this direction, they have taken an almighty gamble - contrary to the wishes of their own grassroots, which must now be converted to the rightist Hague standpoint, and contrary to the electorate's clear and recent rejection of it.

It is little wonder that Kenneth Clarke has politely declined to come on board.

And Mr Hague's unity task will not be helped by his defeated rival - now, perhaps, waiting for another leadership fight in the future - becoming the focus of a substantial pro-Europe, left-centrist group on the Tory back benches.

It is hard to distinguish whether Mr Hague's public air of confidence stems from genuine self-assurance or the bumptiousness of youth, but if he is to prove a revelation he will need to summon up all the faith that he has in himself and has been placed in him.

But perhaps the most eloquent comment on his rise to the Tory leadership is the delighted response to his election from Labour MPs.

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