The Sketch: Simon Carr

The sketch has the news sense of a pig. That doesn't matter. There are more important things than news, even in a newspaper. Higher things, deeper things. Themes. The great chords. We'll come to them.

This was news. Last week, a Tory MP told the Sketch that a Ken Clarke victory would force him out of the parliamentary party. The Europe thing. Not just the euro.

He would not be squared on Ken's agenda, and as a result, by the end of this parliament, the party would have withdrawn the whip. And there would be others. How many? A dozen?

"How many others like you are there, Julian?"

"No one is like me," he said. That was true. It was Julian Lewis. I'm sure he won't mind my saying he is the most peculiar thing in the parliamentary Tory party. And goodness knows... (readers may like to finish that sentence for themselves, without interference from their libel lawyer).

Now a Portillo manager reinforces that. He is saying the Tory whips office is worried about a party split. Naturally he would say that. Equally naturally I believed him. I think it's important to believe everything you hear in the Palace of Westminster. Especially when so doing offers the picture of a once proud vessel splitting down the beam, the poop deck dropping off and the survivors leaping for their lives to cling, yodelling with horror, to the wreckage. A recreational disaster would tide us over the summer season nicely.

And it's possible. Maybe the Tory party just isn't needed any more. The popularity of the Duncan Smith campaign shows that survival isn't compulsory. There are politicians and party members who prefer principles to power.

And as we've said: maybe the country only needs two parties – the first fiscally austere and authoritarian, the second a bunch of raving lefties demanding ever higher public spending.

Where, pray, does that leave the Tories? The unity candidate is emerging as Michael Portillo. Both wings of the party unite to hate him equally. But he has an ally in an unexpected quarter. Amanda Platell's video diary of the campaign has ramped his position. Her musing analysis portrayed him as a modest, rather loyal person whose only obvious crime was to give his mobile phone number to journalists on the eve of the election.

It's fascinating, all of it. The Sketch went prowling around the corridors. Looking for Tories. Mad to be doing anything else. Even though Tessa Jowell was doing her first Question Time as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. No, we had to witness that.

She stood up at the despatch box, fragrant in pink, with all the command and presence of a responsible 12-year-old, answering questions about Wembley and National Lottery money and creativity, with words coming out in no particular order. Charming. It was ladies' tennis, without the knickers. That is, without the knicker interest.

A fact emerged. Kim Howells is worried that tourism workers are being paid slave wages. A terrible thing, that, for a fiscally austere government: slaves being paid wages. Though what that had to do with the arts defied analysis.

Back in the corridors, David Davis yomped along, trailing clouds of grace and glory. Sunk the Portillo campaign and lent his personal support and personal supporters to the IDS campaign. So we don't have to worry about Julian Brazier being foreign secretary. No, it's defence secretary! Wah! To the bunkers!

The Sketch feels it should put its mouth where its money is. Here are the results of today's election. It is, naturally, the worst result possible, but at least it produces raucous laughter. Ian Duncan Smith: 58. Ken Clarke: 54. Michael Portillo: 54. A third ballot the day after tomorrow either produces a necessary loser or a crisis in the party's constitution.

The party's on a roll. Crisis it will be.