Britain: A defiant Iain Duncan Smith yesterday dismissed talk of Conservative leadership plots and insisted he would take his party to victory at the next general election.
The opening day of the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool prompted public declarations of support from potential rivals and successors after a battery of damaging headlines and opinion polls proclaiming Mr Duncan Smith's leadership a failure so far.
Despite its battering over the Iraq war and the fallout from the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, one poll yesterday gave Labour a five point lead over the Conservatives, with Mr Duncan Smith rated behind the other two main party leaders and with Conservative supporters most keen to replace him. Another poll found just 3 per cent of voters rating Mr Duncan Smith for strong and effective leadership, with 41 per cent describing his leadership as adequate "but not more" and 47 per cent considering it "weak and ineffectual". Having warned he was ready to sue over allegations concerning the management of his office and the employment of his wife, a bullish-sounding Mr Duncan Smith determined to shrug off rumours that senior Tories are gathering the names of party grandees and donors for a "round-robin" letter asking him to stand down if this week's conference fails to silence his critics.
During a visit to a Blackpool sixth-form college, the Tory leader quipped: "I will tell you what there is a plot to do, and that is to get rid of Tony Blair. Even his own chancellor is out to get him."
Insisting this week would reveal a Conservative Party offering an alternative government, Mr Duncan Smith declared: "We are going to win the next election, I promise you."
The former chancellor Kenneth Clarke, identified in the Populus poll for the Times of London as the favourite candidate of Tory supporters and the public generally, appeared on the conference fringe warning that the party needed a firm platform of credible policies with which to stave-off attempts to talk it into "a sense of crisis".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World at One programme, Mr Clarke reinforced his message that "a party can't keep having a leadership crisis every other year" and that the Conservative Party's problem "is primarily a problem of policy."
Mr Clarke's comments came as the party launched two eye-catching new policies - for pupil and patient "passports" - promising greater choice in education and health services. Education spokesman Damien Green said the "better schools passport" proposal would allow parents to "spend" the amount allocated for their child's education on the school of their choice.
Shadow health secretary Dr Liam Fox likewise announced a "patient passport" scheme by which anyone choosing to have private treatment could be subsidised up to 60 per cent of the cost of having the same operation done by the NHS.
Mr Clarke warned that the need to stabilise spending and borrowing and to protect the public services must come ahead of any commitment to tax cuts, on which Mr Duncan Smith and shadow chancellor Michael Howard have sent mixed signals in the past few days.
Mr Clarke also side-stepped a suggestion from David Davis, who shadows the deputy prime minister, that he should rejoin the shadow cabinet. Mr Davis, a former leadership contender, also ducked a question about his future ambitions, saying: "I don't think the issue is going to come up, to be frank."
Despite the polls, Mr Davis also insisted Mr Duncan Smith remained popular with the party rank and file.