Major and MPs bicker over gaffes

Senior Tory MPs are so jittery about the party's electoral outlook that they have privately visited John Major to complain that the Government is skidding about on "banana skins''.

They protested about recent ministerial gaffes, confused messages and blurred party leadership.

On Tuesday night, officers of the party's 1922 Committee, including nearly 20 of the senior Tory backbench MPs, led by Sir Marcus Fox, chairman of the 1922, went to the Prime Minister to underline the growing anxiety on their benches at the recent disarray in the Cabinet.

They complained strongly about the disarray between Stephen Dorrell and Michael Forsyth over devolution; between Kenneth Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind about "hostility" to the European single currency; and Mr Dorrell's gaffe in ruling out ERM entry in 1999. All these fumbled messages had damaged morale, they told Mr Major.

The 1922 executive officers, who include some of the longest-serving Tory MPs, gave their backing to the Tory Party chairman, Brian Mawhinney, but complained about the confusion over who was in charge of the Conservative election campaign being mounted by Conservative Central Office.

One Tory MP who was there said: "Brian is doing a very good job. He is hard hitting, and can put Labour on the spot. But there are too many chiefs."

The Prime Minister's friends dismissed the backbench complaints as a "whinge list" and said Mr Major had shown them a firm smack of leadership.

"They came with a fairly lengthy whinge list, but the Prime Minister sent them away with a flea in the ear," a Tory MP said.

Mr Major is said to have impressed the group with his determination to lead from the front in the campaign for the election, which they were convinced will be on 1 May. "It will be a very personal campaign. He is very relaxed, and is pretty upbeat, now that the decks are being cleared," said another Tory source.

The group emerged with a conviction that Mr Major is planning a long campaign and that he will use the Conservative Central Council in Bath on 14 March as the springboard for the Tory fight-back against Labour's lead.

With only eight weeks to go before the election, the arrival of the senior officers of the Tory back bench to complain about the confusion over the campaign may be seen by Mr Major as a further "banana skin".

The Prime Minister last night dismissed as "a load of nonsense" talk of Cabinet ministers jockeying for the leadership by overlapping each other's responsibilities. In a BBC Newsnight interview, Mr Major said: "Would you prefer people who express views or would you prefer the sort of Stalinist silence with a piece of paper handed out telling everybody what they must say? There is a difference between being in Government and Opposition."

Mr Major said he was prepared to say "sorry" over the expulsion of the pound from the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, providing he could take credit for defeating inflation.

He also flatly denied the charge by Lord McAlpine of West Green in memoirs which have added to the party's problems that he had asked the former party fund raiser to seek money from the Greek millionaire, John Latsis. And the Prime Minister described as "fantasy figures" one report that the Tories had raised pounds 40 million to fight the election.

The MPs who met the Prime Minister believe that the latest campaign posters are on the right lines, by attacking Labour's spending commitments, but they want the campaign to be more hard-hitting, and above all, they want the Cabinet "singing from the same hymn sheet".