Heseltine calls on Tory MPs to revolt against Duncan Smith

Michael Heseltine calls on Tory MPs today to oust Iain Duncan Smith and launch an open rebellion against the party's grassroots members by installing Kenneth Clarke as their leader without holding an election.

In an interview with The Independent, Lord Heseltine makes the most explicit call yet by a senior Conservative for Mr Duncan Smith to be sacked. He wants Mr Clarke to run a "dream ticket" leadership bid by making Michael Portillo his deputy.

He urges Tory MPs to defy the party's 350,000 members by denying them the leadership ballot provided in the Conservatives' rulebook, which says MPs should choose a shortlist of two candidates, giving members the final decision.

The intervention by the former deputy prime minister will reopen the intense debate inside the Tory party over whether Mr Duncan Smith should lead the party into the next general election.

Lord Heseltine says Mr Clarke is "head and shoulders" above the other potential Tory leaders and believes that under the former chancellor the party could close the gap with Labour at the next election and give it a chance of regaining power in the following one.

Mr Clarke was defeated by Mr Duncan Smith in last year's leadership election and Lord Heseltine admits that he might lose again in a members' ballot because of his pro-European views.

"There is a solution," he says. "The parliamentary party should say, 'Well, those are the rules of the party as a whole, but we are going to have a separate leader for the parliamentary party.' They would then choose Ken Clarke. I suspect also that this would bring Michael Portillo back into the front line."

Although Lord Heseltine admits that his plan would be a "constitutional aberration", he believes the party members would soon accept Mr Clarke as leader to boost the party's recovery prospects.

In a withering assessment of Mr Duncan Smith, Lord Heseltine declares that there is "not any prospect" of the party having "a ghost of a chance of winning the next election". He adds: "We've got a better shadow cabinet on the back benches than we have in the actual Shadow Cabinet on the front bench."

Although his comments will enrage some activists, the plan won the support of one grassroots group. John Strafford, the chairman of the Conservative Campaign for Democracy, said he did not believe the move would breach the rules because the MPs would be presenting party members with a shortlist of one. He said: "I would probably back it because it would get us out of the hole we are in at the moment, but with qualifications. There must be a commitment to democratise the party."

He added: "Kenneth Clarke is a statesman and Michael Portillo is a thinker. I think it would be better than what we have got now, which is just a nonentity."

Mr Strafford said there had been widespread discussion among Tory grandees in the margins of the party's Bournemouth conference in October of a plan to ask Mr Duncan Smith to stand down and replace him with a Clarke-Portillo "dream ticket" without a members' ballot.

But some MPs believe there are flaws in the Heseltine plan. If Mr Duncan Smith were defeated in a vote of confidence among MPs, a right-wing candidate such as David Davis or Michael Howard might stand for the leadership in an attempt to stop Mr Clarke.

There are also doubts about whether Mr Portillo would return to frontline politics. One friend said: "He fears the media spotlight would be on him all the time, even if Clarke were the leader. He doesn't really want to go through all that again."

Meanwhile,Mr Duncan Smith appeared yesterday to contradict Oliver Letwin, the shadow Home Secretary, who on Friday backed government plans to allow civil partnerships for same-sex couples.

The Tory leader told the BBC's On The Record programme: "We are not in favour of gay marriages because marriage has a very special place in society."

He said that the Tories would back reforms that were not a "pale imitation of marriage" but that rectified legitimate grievances of everyone ­ not just gay people ­ who lived together.