He'll need more than a Fisherman's Friend

One need not have gone to Eton or to that almost equally brutal establishment, Mr Iain Duncan Smith's Alma Mater HMS Conway, to recognise the feeling of excitement which overcomes a group when it is evident that someone is about to Get Into Trouble. The same unhealthy phenomenon can be observed in comparatively civilised schools as well. It can be discerned also in the House of Commons, which, as feminist reformers keep telling us, is no different from a great big school for backward boys.

It was certainly present in the House on Wednesday when Mr Duncan Smith rose to question the Prime Minister. He would either be humiliated or, as usual, fail to land the killer punch – for that matter, a punch of any description. After a few minutes it was Mr Tony Blair who was retreating, head down, arms crossed in front of him. One almost expected Mr Speaker to intervene to prevent further punishment to the lad.

The occasion for the assault was the Labour manifesto's promise or, in the argot of New and Old Labour alike, "pledge": "We will not introduce internal 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them." Now it appeared that this was precisely what Mr Charles Clarke proposed to do after a decent lapse of time.

It is a change that is urged by Mr Blair's educational adviser, Mr Andrew Adonis. He had annoyed the late Ms Estelle Morris in various ways, though this was as nothing beside the annoyance which Ms Morris had caused Mr Adonis. By the way, the phrase "More Andrew than Adonis" was touted in the papers as if the handiwork of some anonymous Whitehall wit. In fact it was coined by the novelist and columnist Mr Robert Harris, in private conversation rather than in any of his writings, and it caught on.

Mr Duncan Smith had certainly landed a powerful blow. The judges were agreed on that. Conscientious parents might have relinquished a second holiday, given up strong spirits, cancelled the subscription to the golf club, all to help send young Nick and Emily to fee-playing schools. They now found they were liable to fork out even more cash if their clever children got into one of the leading universities forming the "Russell Group", so called because its representatives conspire in the Russell Hotel, London WC1.

The initial response was that Mr Duncan Smith had, with one bound, escaped from his troubles, for the time being, at any rate. This period of respite lasted 24 hours, if that. Friday's papers were full of plots or rumours of plots. One of the alleged plotters was reported to be threatening legal action for having been so traduced.

As an amateur of our law of defamation, I think the courts might well refuse to entertain such a claim. They would say that it involved a "proceeding in Parliament". For what is an attempt to dislodge Mr Duncan Smith if it is not a proceeding in Parliament? Hence it was barred by the Bill of Rights from consideration by the courts. True, the Bill was recently modified, quite rightly, to enable Mr Neil Hamilton to sue Mr Mohamed al-Fayed. But this modification would scarcely cover the circumstances surrounding the round-robin letter required to set up a vote of confidence in Mr Duncan Smith.

The reason such a vote might and may still be held – though I do not think it will be – was supposed to be that Mr Duncan Smith was so consistently inept at Prime Minister's Questions. In a way, this was unfair. Neither he nor his supporters, when he was elected last year, claimed he was particularly good on his legs, though in all the excitement they omitted to tell us what he was good at. Mr William Hague enjoyed some small triumphs at PMQs and that did not impress the electorate at all, as he himself admitted last week, in an article making an affecting display of loyalty to his successor.

However, the persistent frog in Mr Duncan Smith's throat is a disadvantage in any leader; indeed, in any politician, irrespective of whether he or she has pretensions as a public orator or parliamentary performer. In olden times the advice was to go and suck a Jujube. There are still those who swear by a Fisherman's Friend. On a recent visit to a pharmacist, I noticed that Night Nurse was freely available. Though I have myself given up virtually all forms of public speaking, I find that for any throat trouble the sovereign remedy is Tyrozets. Note: It is important to exceed the recommended dose.

But the supposed ineptitude of Mr Duncan Smith as a parliamentarian really has very little to do with the present discontents. It is a pretext – rather like Mr George Bush's dossier on Iraq. The real reason for the dissatisfaction is that the Conservatives had, according to their own low expectations, a successful conference. As George Formby used to sing, things might have been a great deal worse. At the same time, the recent news for the Government has been almost uniformly bad. And yet the polls have not only refused to close the gap but actually made it wider. No wonder the Tories are asking: what then shall we do now?

Some believe that the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Michael Spicer, owes an over-riding duty of unquestioning loyalty to the incumbent leader. This is not true, in theory or in practice. His position is quite different from that of the party chairman. In theory, the chairman of the 1922 is meant to represent Conservative backbenchers. In practice, he has been either neutral about or positively opposed to the threatened leader. William Anstruther-Gray was neutral about Alec Home; Edward du Cann was hostile to Edward Heath, who had sacked him from the party chairmanship in 1967; Cranley Onslow stayed somewhat bumblingly above the battle to dislodge Margaret Thatcher. There is no obligation whatever on Sir Michael to secure Mr Duncan Smith's position.

The Conservatives have operated a system of internal democracy only since 1965. Until 1997, this was confined to MPs. In 1997, the mechanism was changed by Mr Hague, though he himself had been narrowly chosen over Mr Kenneth Clarke under the old arrangements. Mr Hague threw the contest open to the party members, who had to elect one of the top two candidates chosen by the MPs by exhaustive ballot.

Last year – it is now forgotten – Mr Clarke unexpectedly defeated Mr Michael Portillo, who took third place, with Mr Duncan Smith second. Miss Ann Widdecombe, a Portillo supporter, was in tears. There had been nothing so funny since the death of Little Nell. The party members then proceeded to choose Mr Duncan Smith rather than Mr Clarke. Accordingly Mr Duncan Smith never did possess the full confidence of his parliamentary colleagues in the first place. They wanted Mr Clarke instead. This is now becoming manifest to all.