Britain’s Buffeted Tories Pick New Leader

LONDON —  A distinguished political party that lost its way after 18 years in power turned Thursday to a 36-year-old Euroskeptic to rebuild it.

“I am elected to lead, to heal the party back to unity and back to power,” said William Jefferson Hague as he assumed the leadership of the bedraggled and divided Conservative Party, which hopes to transform itself into a credible opponent to juggernaut Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Labor Party.

Hague, who joined the party as a teenager, became its youngest leader in 200 years with a 90-72 victory over party veteran Kenneth Clarke in a third ballot by Conservative members of Parliament.

Clarke, a pro-European on the Tory left wing, led the first two ballots to head a party humiliated by Blair in May 1 elections, and he was also the choice of grass-roots Conservative leaders.

As the opposition leader, Hague names a shadow Cabinet and gets the first crack at the prime minister during question time in Parliament.

Under Hague, the Conservatives will probably be marked by their firm hostility to closer British collaboration with partners in the European Union.

A graduate of Oxford University who has served eight years in Parliament, Hague opposes Britain’s membership in a single European currency.

Beyond his suspicions of Europe, Hague wants reduction of the government’s role in the welfare state. He supports abortion curbs and restoration of capital punishment.

Hague, son of middle-class parents in the former coal and steel region of south Yorkshire, brought a Conservative Party conference to its feet when he was only 17 with a fiery speech, but around Parliament his early reputation was as a likable and unassuming individual.

Critics sometimes call him “Hague the vague” and “Major Mark 2” after former Prime Minister John Major, who announced that he would step down after losing to Blair in May.

Hague, who is engaged to be married, was the minister for Wales for two years in Major’s Cabinet. He opposes Blair’s plans for devolution of local government to Scotland and Wales.

He essentially promises he will do for the Conservatives what Blair did for a Labor Party long lost in the political wilderness: unite it, reinvigorate it and use it to reconquer the political center.

“I am going to bring the party together, I am going to take it back on the road to unity, to confidence and back to power, and the whole Conservative Party is now going to work together to achieve that objective,” Hague said after Thursday’s vote.