Mellor warns of meltdown unless leader is dumped Â

The Tories risk being pushed into third place at the next election unless Iain Duncan Smith is deposed as leader, the former cabinet minister David Mellor warned yesterday.

He said the prospect of falling behind the Liberal Democrats was "a joke no longer", likening support for Mr Duncan Smith to the "misguided loyalty" to John Major in 1995. Mr Mellor echoed John Redwood's campaign slogan in 1995 "no change, no chance".

He said: "Loyalty is not a commodity to be lightly wasted on Iain Duncan Smith. Having been elected in 1992 on Major's coat-tails, he spent the whole of that parliament undermining him. In the loyalty stakes, he is entitled to nothing." Mr Mellor was writing in the London Evening Standard after a YouGov poll revealed falling support among people who voted Tory in 2001.

The poll, for The Daily Telegraph, found that only 71 per cent of people who voted Tory last time would do so now. Sixteen per cent said they were thinking of voting for another party, while 5 per cent said they might not vote at all. More than half of 2001 Conservative supporters said the party made a mistake in electing Mr Duncan Smith as leader.

Further bad news for the Conservatives came when they lost control of Stratford-upon-Avon council in by-elections, and Ann Widdecombe, the former Home Office minister, reopened wounds over Section 28, which stops local authorities promoting homosexuality.

Mr Duncan Smith is expected to propose a compromise to maintain the measure's aims but remove its controversial language. But Miss Widdecombe said: "My view is that Section 28 should stay. If there is to be any substitute to Section 28 that seeks to fulfil its intention but in a different way, obviously it has got to protect children from the promotion of alternative lifestyles."