On being just William

"THIS is a marvellous feeling," says William Hague as he leans back contentedly in his big chair as if he's nicely replete after a very good dinner.

Outside, Stokesley market bustles prosperously in the warm autumn sunshine, which catches on the horseshoe of hills that embraces the North Yorkshire town.

The Richmond MP talks easily about helping Northallerton with its flooding problems, about Wensleydale pulling itself up by the bootstraps, and about the National Army Museum coming to Catterick.

Then, almost casually, he notes that he'll be popping over to Blackpool for an afternoon at the conference. He'll take his constituency delegates out for tea and sit in on the odd debate. While his successor as leader, Iain Duncan Smith, sweats it out on the stage under increasing pressure to get his voice heard by the voters, Mr Hague will be taking it easy.

"Generally," he says, "it's better for the party when its ex-leaders are seen to be supportive but not heard in too much detail."

He laughs and shifts comfortably in his seat. He'd become obsessed by politics when he was 13; he'd starred at the conference under Margaret Thatcher's gaze when he was 16; he'd become the youngest Tory MP at 27, the youngest leader at 36 and so the youngest ex-leader at 40. Now, two years on, he seems more relaxed and at ease with himself than at any time in the last decade.

"I really don't have - people always look at me with disbelief when I say this but it is true - specific political ambitions any more," he says. "I did have once and then I found when I got to the top that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. You inherit a thousand problems as well as a hundred opportunities.

"And it does take over your life. That's alright if, out of a sense of duty, you allow your life to be taken over, but I'm very happy now. I have no intention of leaving Parliament. I enjoy being an MP more than ever, and I'm more use than ever to my constituents because when I walk into the Commons, I don't want anything from anybody in terms of a position for myself and I haven't got anything that anyone can take away from me.

"This is a marvellous feeling."

While the ambitions may have gone, the passions for politics and party remain. At this week's conference, the Tories have to remind the British people why they still exist.

"Conservatives stand for people having the freedom to make the best of their own lives as individuals, communities, families, and for providing a safety net for those who can't cope with the consequences of the freedom," he says. "That in a nutshell is, for me, Conservative philosophy, as opposed to thinking that the state should direct people's lives.

"Alongside that is a certain sense of national identity, not nationalistic but in the sense of preserving democracy, giving people a pride in this country."

On his cufflinks is a silver outline of Great Britain set against a deep blue sea, and one of his major concerns is the new European Constitution. He wants a referendum.

"The urgent task is to stop the juggernaut crashing through all the hedges of democratic procedures," he says. "We have to draw a line and say we cannot go on with ever-closer European integration."

But long before he mentions Europe, he's talking about how that Conservative philosophy of freedom can be applied to public services - freedom for headteachers and hospital managers to run their own affairs without interference from the centre.

He feels that Labour's massive injections of tax-payers' cash will ultimately play into the Tories' hands, especially with another two highly-taxed years to go before the next general election.

"The Labour Party is demonstrating - inadvertently - that money alone does not produce quality," he says. "This opens up the whole debate on public services to more innovative thinking.

"Labour's foundation hospitals, and the announcement that the comprehensive approach was a big mistake, are big retreats. Well done to them for realising this, but the Conservatives are the ones who can really take these ideas further."

So how come the electorate hasn't heard Mr Duncan Smith cooing about Labour shooting itself in the foot?

'When I was leader I underestimated how much politics involves fashion," he explains, his brow shinely smooth and unfurrowed despite his traumatic time in the top job. "I realised this when I went on Have I Got News For You? earlier this year - more people noticed what I said on that programme than almost anything I did or said in the whole four years I was leader of the Conservative Party. When we lost in 1997, we went out of fashion, and we'll only get a hearing again when people get thoroughly fed up with the Government - and they are getting that way."

He believes the Tories can overturn Tony Blair's massive majority at the next election. "Voters are more fickle than they used to be, hopefully in a discerning way," he says. "Parties can win and lose big quite quickly as we found in '97, and people switch between parties as they do between brands when they are shopping.

"We've had ten years of Labour dominance. That decade is over. It is a competitive party system now."

And, although the sub-plot of this week's conference is whether IDS can remain as leader until Christmas, Mr Hague believes Mr Duncan Smith is the leader for the next election.

"He has my absolute 100 per cent support," says Mr Hague. "He's straightforward with clear convictions and a strong sense of duty. In a world where a lot of politicians don't have those things, we should recognise and support those qualities."

He is, though, reluctant to offer any advice. "I don't sit at the back of a plane with a megaphone," he says. "If I still wanted to be deciding what should happen to the party, I should have carried on as leader. But I was absolutely sure I should resign from the party's point of view and from a personal point of view."

Nowadays there's more to William Hague than just politics. When he drove himself to the top job, all anyone knew about him was that he was bald, had a bass voice and he was unfeasibly young. Now he's writing a book about someone who is even more renowned for being even younger: William Pitt the Younger.

"I'm now able to do other things that I've always want to do," says Mr Hague. "There isn't an accessible single volume on Pitt and he's the second longest serving Prime Minister in history. He was unique, Prime Minister at 24 - it never happened before and will never happen again and I just want to tell that story.

"All my bits of spare time and reading time have gone into that for the last two-and-a-bit years. I'm looking forward to publishing it next September and then I will go out and give lectures on it."

He continues: "I do still have ambitions like writing a good book, getting Northallerton's flooding problems sorted out, but I've got the ambition out of my system in terms of national politics. If anybody requests that I go back to the front line, which I won't entertain in this Parliament, I would look at it dispassionately. I wouldn't feel any personal need to do it; ambition is no longer my guiding star."

He sounds like William Hague the Older and the Wiser and, perversely, the Conservative Party could probably do with him more now than when he was the Younger, the Driven and the Leader.