A major problem for the Conservative Party

In a subtle manner, he is continuing the Tory tradition in which former leaders knife their successors

Listening to John Major expressing forceful and authoritative views on Iraq the other day, my first instinctive reaction was "he would make a good leader of the Conservative party". Admittedly, he has already had the job, and does not want to go anywhere near it again, but the extraordinary dearth of charisma in the shadow cabinet means that former leaders shine dazzlingly.

It will not be long before William Hague is seen as one of the party's stars, a former leader with a big political future ahead of him. Indeed, the revisionism of the Hague era is already under way. Several Conservative MPs are whispering, "At least William was a brilliant speaker with a sense of humour." Mr Hague will be back in some capacity or other before very long.

The leader who preceded Mr Hague made his rare intervention on BBC's Today programme two days ago. While supporting the Government's broad approach towards Saddam Hussein, Mr Major raised some salient questions. Why was Parliament being recalled belatedly? What was the exit strategy in a possible war with Iraq? What were the plans for Iraq and the wider region assuming Saddam was removed; in other words what were the precise war aims? When asked whether these were the sort of questions that should have been raised by the Leader of the Opposition Mr Major replied mischievously that this was "a matter for Iain".

It became a matter for Iain within 24 hours. Evidently Iain had hit the roof, and he was provoked into a response on yesterday's Today programme. He insisted that he had been robust in calling for Parliament to be consulted while fully supporting President Bush and Mr Blair. Mr Duncan Smith has been on the defensive in recent interviews. By the end of this one he had protested so much, he was almost claiming credit for the offer from Iraq to allow the weapons' inspectors back in, as if Saddam looked up to his doting entourage and said, "That's it, the game's up! Mr Duncan Smith is standing shoulder to shoulder with President Bush."

It cannot be much fun being Mr Duncan Smith at the moment. Most mornings he switches on the radio to hear a senior Conservative taking a swipe of one sort or another. If it is not Amanda Platell predicting that he cannot win the next election, it is Mr Major implying that he could have been more probing in his support for the Government, that while standing should to shoulder he could nudge his elbow and create a little space between him and them.

There is no question about it. Albeit discreetly, Mr Major was striking a dissenting note. Had he wanted to be loyal to his leader he would have replied, "Iain is doing a fantastic job, and has been absolutely right in declaring an unswerving support for the Prime Minister at a moment of international crisis." Instead he offered those lethal words: "That's a matter for Iain."

In a subtler manner, Mr Major is continuing the Conservative tradition in which former leaders delicately, or indelicately, knife their successors. This as much as anything else is a sign that the party is still in serious decline. In the 1980s previous Labour leaders did it to their successors. Look what happened to their party and their successors . In this case, Mr Major was not being as brutal as Ted Heath was to Margaret Thatcher. Nor was he being as hysterically hostile as Lady Thatcher was to him. But there is no love lost between Mr Major and Mr Duncan Smith and it shows. Mr Major let it show.

There is a minor reason for this. Mr Duncan Smith was one of those who made Mr Major's life as close to political hell as it is possible to get, by rebelling regularly against the Maastricht treaty. In fairness to Mr Duncan Smith, he was a quiet and thoughtful rebel compared with most of the other Tory dissenters, who enjoyed themselves hugely. I recall bumping into two rebel MPs between BBC studios in the mid 1990s, giggling knowingly. One of them said to me, "We perform anywhere: studios, birthday parties, bar mitzvahs." Mr Duncan Smith was not in that extrovert, fun-loving category. He was not available for bar mitzvahs. Even so, Mr Major, who I suspect is still traumatised by those desperate years, will never forgive him.

But this should not detract from the substance of Mr Major's comments, which are all the more potent because they come from a position of broad support for the Bush/Blair stance. They are also based on his experience of the earlier Gulf War in 1991.

His call for Parliament to be treated with greater respect has been one of his big themes since well before the Iraqi crisis. The argument is flawed in that when he was Prime Minister he had no choice but to respect Parliament. He had a tiny majority, and that majority was composed of Conservative MPs willing to cause trouble at bar mitzvahs. Governments with landslide majorities inevitably pay less attention to the Commons.

Where Mr Major is right is that MPs – Conservative as well as Labour – have been scattered around the country listening to the alarm of their local voters and feeling powerless to do anything about it. That sense of frustration was building up long before the Government announced the recall of Parliament and reached its height when Mr Blair gave long answers to journalists at his Sedgefield press conference earlier this month, rather than to anxious MPs in the Commons.

It would have been both sensible and tactically astute for the Leader of the Opposition to initiate the calls for a recall rather than wait until the Government was about to relent on the issue. As Michael Brown has highlighted on this page in recent weeks, there is some unease on the Conservative benches about a possible war which will be reflected in next week's debate. Indeed there is unease within the shadow cabinet, although this will not be reflected in public, at least for the time being.

Mr Major also raised the unanswered questions that will not be addressed by the Government's much-hyped dossier on Saddam's weapons, even if it is packed with lurid detail. After several speeches and press conferences from US and British leaders, there is still no sense of what would happen in Iraq if Saddam were toppled. Nor is it at all clear how long troops would be committed to the region after the victory, however that victory is defined.

The Bush administration is reluctant even to acknowledge such questions. Tony Blair is conciliatory in tone, saying that such doubts are "perfectly understandable", but that is slightly different from addressing the doubts. Such is the dominance of the world's only superpower that there is a widely held view in the US that it can take each crisis in turn: first it sorts out Saddam, and then it can face the question of what to do next. That does not mean that the less than mighty Britain should take such a short-term approach.

At the very least it should not constrain the Conservatives, who could combine a broadly bi-partisan position with some challenging questions. It is not easy managing the politics of opposition in the build-up to a possible war, but Mr Major showed the way.

He might have had a nightmarish time as Prime Minister but he was Leader of the Opposition only for a few weeks after the 1997 election. Perhaps he would fancy a longer stint before that young Mr Hague is ready to take over.

s.richards@independent.co.uk