BRITAIN: The fear of who might succeed him as Tory leader might save Iain Duncan Smith yet, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
Iain Duncan Smith was once described as just the right man for a tiger shoot.
When introducing his successor to the voters of Chingford, Norman (now Lord) Tebbit prevented IDS answering one woman's inquiry about the new man's attitude to fox-hunting, by pointing to his colleague's mouth and declaring: "Madam, these are the teeth of a killer. This man must have meat or die." Of such myths are political reputations made and spun.
Lord Tebbit, in truth, has more recently found himself hard-pressed to "spin" on behalf of the man he once considered the keeper of the Thatcherite flame.
"Compassionate Conservatism" and touchy-feely concern for the residents of sink housing estates in Glasgow were not what Lord Tebbit had in mind when he pressed the case for this "normal family man" against the leadership ambitions of the suspect and exotic Michael Portillo two years ago.
But touchy-feely - albeit of a wholly unconvincing sort - is what Duncan Smith has served up to a disillusioned Tory right, saddled with another leader of its choice made in the mistaken belief that he - like John Major in 1990 - really was "one of us".
From the Tory left there is consequent recognition that IDS has begun the necessary process of broadening the party's appeal; encouraging the selection of ethnic, openly gay and other candidates more typical of the society the party would govern, and developing a range of policies attuned to voters' everyday concerns about the mixed and frequently failing state of Britain's public services.
Yet on the left, too, the queasy feeling is that none of this carries real conviction but is evidence, rather, of a leader with no real sense of his own political identity or that which he would forge for his party and with none of the skills required in the televisual and presidential age to connect with the public at large.
None of which really is surprising. or Mr Duncan Smith, like Mr Major before him, really was elected for who he was not. Not Ken Clarke, not Michael Portillo - "the lowest common denominator", as critics now unkindly put it in a party previously riven by the great idealogical dispute over Europe.
Indeed that "virtue" of not being somebody else - and fear of who might succeed - might save him yet. Certainly that will be the hope of party loyalists seeking to frighten MPs with thoughts of a "Michael 'something of the night about him' Howard" leadership.
Yet the irony may be that Mr Duncan Smith's very success in calming his party's European war might just enable former supporters of Kenneth Clarke to accommodate themselves to a Howard leadership which would, as one commentator put it the other day, at least offer the party the opportunity to regain its reputation for competence.
Mr Oliver Letwin, the party's "thinking" shadow home secretary, last night firmly ruled himself out of any leadership contest. But the best-case scenario emerging among MPs would have him and the likely popular choice in the constituencies, Mr David Davis, forming a triumvirate with Mr Howard which might keep the vote within the gift of the parliamentary party.
The worst-case scenario is that the tiger shooter might just scare enough MPs to hang on by the skin of his teeth. Indeed that prospect is so plainly horrendous that Tory MPs would actually be better then to at least reconfirm IDS handsomely. But there seems little prospect of that.