UK: Disgraced British peer Jeffrey Archer has applied to rejoin the Conservative Party five years after he was suspended over lying claims that ended in him being jailed for perjury.
However the one-time Tory deputy chairman looks almost certain to be blocked from a return to frontline politics after leadership front-runner David Cameron ruled out having him back.
Lady Mary Archer said yesterday that her husband had applied to join two Conservative constituency associations.
Even if he was successful, it appears he would be confined to the role of a party activist after Mr Cameron dismissed the idea of allowing him to return to the Tory benches in the upper house.
Since returning to the House of Lords in May for the first time since he was released from jail in 2003 after serving two years of a four-year sentence, he has sat as a "non-affiliated" peer.
Mr Cameron told Sky News that if he were Tory leader, "the thing that would be under my control is who receives the whip for the party in the House of Lords and I don't think it would be appropriate for Jeffrey Archer to receive that whip".
Lord Archer resigned as party deputy chairman in 1986 after newspaper suggestions that he slept with a prostitute. He subsequently won a libel case and £500,000 damages.
He was made a life peer in 1992, but in 2000 was suspended by the party for five years after claims emerged that he had invented an alibi in the 1987 libel case. He was found guilty of perjury in July 2001 and jailed.