Man for All Seasons?(Michael Howard )

"He's a grown-up." It's said so often about the new leader of the Conservative Party, by friend and foe alike, that it might one day become an apt epitaph. At 62, though, Michael Howard is not only very much alive but the single best hope for reviving Britain's once mighty Tories. He's laying the foundation for a turnaround by mining his own experience, bringing back respected Tory figures from the old days and imposing new discipline and direction on the party. Considering that detractors once likened a predecessor to a dead parrot, symbol of a mouldering party, being called a grown-up counts as a high compliment.

Without question, the Conservatives have looked pretty pitiful since Tony Blair's Labour Party demolished them at the polls in 1997. Ever since, the party of Churchill and Thatcher--a proud institution that reckons itself to be the oldest and most successful party in the history of democracy--has been banished to the political wilderness. Howard's mission is to lead them out, and these days the challenge is looking far less daunting than it did just a year ago.

That's because Blair and Labour finally seem vulnerable. Iraq, growing popular dissatisfaction with public services and the government's failing efforts to improve them, the continuing controversy over whether Blair's inner circle "sexed up" WMD intelligence to bolster the case for war--all this has converged to sharply undercut people's trust in government. As for the Tories, who've devoted their interregnum to ineffectual infighting, they appear ready at last to pull in one direction. With Blair expected to call an election next year, the Conservatives are careful not to set their sights too high. "Let's be clear," says a senior Tory backbencher. "It would be foolish to say we're going to win. But we are ready to fight--to fight together and fight hard--to win back some of the ground we've lost."

Howard was certainly in fighting form in the House of Commons last week, when he questioned Blair about his role in events leading up to the suicide of the government scientist and Iraq WMD expert David Kelly. Kelly killed himself last summer after being exposed as a source of news stories alleging that Blair's government had shaped, perhaps even distorted, intelligence to make the Iraq war more palatable to a skeptical public. As he has in the past, Blair maintained that he had "emphatically not" leaked Kelly's name. Citing testimony from a senior Ministry of Defense civil servant that Blair chaired meetings at which the "naming strategy" was discussed, Howard asked the prime minister whether he would resign if it were shown that he had lied to Parliament. Yes, the P.M. irritably replied, then challenged Howard to delay "cross-examining" him until a special judicial inquiry issues its report sometime in the next few weeks. Howard smiled. "I can assure the prime minister that I am looking forward to that!"

As confident as he looks today, Howard was in some ways an odd choice to rejuvenate the Conservative Party when he was elected leader in November. He is not young. Nor is he without baggage. As an M.P. for two decades and a cabinet minister and junior minister in the governments of John Major and Margaret Thatcher, his sharp tongue and zero-tolerance toughness famously persuaded one of his colleagues that there was "something of the night" about him. Yet while he is not especially mediagenic or charismatic, his life story makes a pleasing political narrative: the son of a Romanian-born father and Russian-born mother, Howard is the first professing Jew to lead a major British party. (The non- British press, it must be said, makes more of Howard's Jewish roots than do the British media, which only rarely mention them.)

Howard's appeal within the party is not driven by personality. He isn't ...