BRITAIN: The pace of the Conservative leadership campaign will quicken today when Dr Liam Fox declares his candidacy and former chancellor Kenneth Clarke makes the second major speech of his campaign.
Shadow home secretary David Davis remains the front runner amid signs of a growing revolt by grassroots activists against planned rule changes to give MPs the final decision in the contest to succeed Michael Howard, expected in November.
However, Mr Clarke received a further boost yesterday when a survey of Conservative constituency chairmen showed him to be the preferred candidate by a majority of almost two to one over Mr Davis.
A poll for the BBC's Newsnight programme earlier this week found Mr Clarke was backed by 40 per cent of voters at large, and was the one leadership candidate likely to persuade floating voters to overturn Labour's Commons majority. That reflected an earlier Populus poll suggesting Mr Clarke would close the gap on a Gordon Brown-led Labour Party to within two points, while a Davis leadership would leave the Conservatives where they were in this year's election.
However, the mixed news for Mr Clarke from yesterday's London Times survey is that the constituency chairmen appear ready to reject Mr Howard's proposal to hand back to the MPs the power to choose the leader. While the polls suggest Mr Clarke is also the favourite among Tory voters, the former chancellor appears so far to have attracted little support from the new intake of Conservative MPs, who now account for one-fifth of the parliamentary party.
In an interview yesterday Mr Clarke acknowledged his need to win over the 51 MPs elected in May, many of whom have barely met him and a number of whom are already declared for David Cameron's challenge to Mr Davis.
He told the Daily Telegraph he would stand if the grassroots rejected the new rules and retained the final say in the leadership contest, and insisted he could yet win their support.
Again suggesting that the euro need not be a divisive issue for at least 10 years, and that the European constitution is effectively dead, the pro-European he said: "If the party believes that in the end it has to choose a leader because of his views on the single currency then in my opinion it is beginning to lose touch with reality and will deserve to be in opposition for quite a long time."