Senior Tories round on Heseltine as 'a serial Conservative assassin'

Senior Tories and grassroots activists hit back at Michael Heseltine yesterday over his call for the party's MPs to sack Iain Duncan Smith and impose Kenneth Clarke as leader.

The proposal by Lord Heseltine, outlined in an interview in yesterday's Independent, would deny the party's 350,000 members their right to choose the leader.

Mr Duncan Smith said the proposal was "one of the most irrelevant stories I have ever heard". The Tory leader's aides dismissed it as a "ridiculous fantasy".

The former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit denounced Lord Heseltine as "a serial Conservative assassin". He said: "It cannot be a coincidence that just as the Blairs are floundering in a sea of sleaze, lies and incompetence, Michael Heseltine comes to their rescue with an attack on the Conservative leadership. He did it to William Hague. Indeed, he did it to Margaret Thatcher. I suspect he would do it to any leader except Michael Heseltine."

Sir Norman Fowler, another former Tory chairman, said: "Iain Duncan Smith does need a fair chance. The public would think it very strange if we changed course after about 15 months. The party in the country are totally capable of understanding what the fortunes of the party are and who the leader should be."

Theresa May, the party chairman, said of Lord Heseltine: "I think he should take up golf, like every other retired person."

The right of grassroots Tories to elect the leader was used for the first time last year, when Tory MPs chose a shortlist of two and Mr Duncan Smith beat Mr Clarke in a ballot of party members.

Michael Normington, chairman of the Conservative Charter Movement, accused Lord Heseltine of "showing contempt" for party members and said he was part of "a bygone age". He said: "Party members have very few rights and he is seeking to remove the one significant one they have.

"It was the MPs who created the new system. The members should have a wider choice of candidates than just two names."

Some Tories were sympathetic to Lord Heseltine's opinions. Phillip Oppenheim, a former minister and ex-parliamentary aide to Mr Clarke, said MPs could legitimately take back the power to choose the leader if the party did very badly in next May's local elections.

He said: "I would be very tempted. It is fraught with difficulty, but I think in the current situation or the situation that might pertain in six months' time, the Tory party may have to take drastic action or it faces slipping down into number three behind the Liberal Democrats."

Last night Lord Heseltine accused the Tory leader of failing to come across as a "modern" leader. "He [Mr Duncan Smith] has to decide why we are at 30, 31 per cent. We've been in this position now for a significant period of time, and I am afraid the judgement that I hear on all sides is that as an Opposition we are simply not effectively challenging the Government," he said on the BBC's Newsnight. "If you don't do that, you haven't got a ghost of a chance of getting the ratings up. He simply isn't someone that comes over as a modern leader in a televisual world. That's the hard reality."

The bookmaker Ladbrokes is offering odds of 4-1 that Mr Duncan Smith will resign in 2003. David Davis is favourite to replace him at 11-4, with Mr Clarke on 3-1, Ms May at 7-2, Michael Portillo at 7-1 and Oliver Letwin at 8-1. Outsiders for the position include some of the party's former leaders, including William Hague at 100-1, John Major at 500-1 and Margaret Thatcher at 1,000-1.