Donald Macintyre: Has the Conservative Party lost its appetite for power?

'The polls show that Mr Clarke is the man most likely to bring floating voters back to the fold'

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Tory leadership contest: special collection

If nothing else, David Davis and Michael Ancram have performed a modest service to Channel 4 and quite possibly a disservice to Michael Portillo. Had they both pulled out of the Conservative Party leadership contest on Tuesday evening, the remarkable video diary of the election campaign made in secret by Amanda Platell, while she was William Hague's press secretary, might have been little more than a titillating footnote in history. The MPs would have decided their shortlist to go to the party membership. And by the time the members cast their votes, Ms Platell's revelations, if there are any, would have been but a distant memory.

But Mr Davis and Mr Ancram have now ensured that the contest will be prolonged over the weekend. This has two consequences. One is that whatever observations Ms Platell has chosen to include, about what she saw as the unhelpfulness of Mr Portillo and his lieutenant Francis Maude towards Mr Hague, will be fresh in the minds of Tory MPs as they whittle down the shortlist. At the very least it will mean that the programme will attract more attention than it would otherwise have done. And the second is that MPs will have time over the weekend to chat to their local party members about who they want to see as their leader.

The second consequence may be more dangerous for Mr Portillo than the first. Though trenchant, Ms Platell's observations about the shadow Chancellor are thought to be short of thermonuclear. The membership backlash against Mr Portillo's candidacy remains a more serious matter.

Mr Portillo has already started touring constituencies in a concerted effort to quell such unrest, with highly positive results, his lieutenants insist. Assuming he is in the final two, perhaps he will be able to win round a large majority of the doubters, thanks to his considerable charm. But he can't possibly visit more than a fraction of the country before the MPs' ballot is completed. And until then, the membership's influence on MPs is likely, on balance, to be negative for him.

The extraordinary tie raises another incidental question. What if it happens again? Let us suppose, for example, that Mr Portillo retains his lead but that Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke or perhaps even David Davis come equal second? On Monday, Sir Michael Spicer, the chairman of the 1922 committee, was certainly minded to rule that all three candidates should go forward to the contest among party members. But he was also minded to eliminate both the fourth and the fifth candidates if they tied in the first ballot, as they turned out to do the following day. Yet he changed his mind. Perhaps he could do so again, as Mr Portillo's supporters would almost certainly prefer. Yet the alternatives are scarcely palatable. He could hardly rule that the frontrunner be acclaimed as leader, and thus deprive the members of a choice. But if he rules for another re-run, he will be keeping back MPs in the first week of the summer parliamentary recess, provoking yet more obloquy on the party and its processes.

The chances are that this won't happen. But the silence on this issue of the rules illustrates the Heath Robinson procedure for electing the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition and the party's candidate to be the next prime minister of the country.

But then you have to pinch yourself to realise that this is what these 166 men and women are doing, for several reasons. One is the extent to which many – though by no means all – are simply enjoying the student union-style manoeuvring in this addictive spectacle. In a sense, we are all, journalists as well as MPs, increasingly enmeshed in what has become an extraordinarily introverted contest. Careerism, prejudice and trickery all threaten to eclipse what you would have thought would be its main purpose: the restoration of the Conservative Party to office.

How else to explain the extraordinary suggestion, freely made by several MPs, including Mr Portillo himself, that some of his supporters voted tactically to kill off other candidates?

The assertion is virtually unprovable, but if true it may have backfired. For it may have left Mr Portillo without the momentum he ideally needs to ensure that he appeals most to one of the more deeply embedded instincts within this constituency – the desire for personal advancement. Mr Portillo was strong among the careerist tendency – which is why more than half the Shadow Cabinet opted for him. Some of the tendency's right-wingers, pricking their ears to the changing wind like a herd of young antelopes, may now consider running to – say – Mr Duncan Smith.

He increasingly looks like the man to beat. The tactical factor means that even the numbers that emerge after today's second ballot may be far from conclusive about where the contest is going. But Mr Portillo has quite a lot to worry about. He knows that his troubles are far from over even if he tops the poll. Most of his supporters appear to think that Mr Duncan Smith will be harder to beat among the party members – particularly older ones – than Mr Clarke. That may be right. But what these calculations wholly fail to take into account is the wider electorate on which, after two truly devastating defeats, the party should be now clearly and exclusively focused. Mr Portillo understands this as well as Mr Clarke. But the opinion polls show, so far without exception, that Mr Clarke is the man most likely to bring floating voters back into the fold.

That doesn't, however, mean that it is merely up to the party to realise that, in some blinding revelation. Mr Clarke has his part to play if he is to win what still looks like an uphill struggle to get on the shortlist. Without trimming, which it is part of his characteristic appeal not to do, he needs to reinforce his assertion when he launched his campaign that he would be leading a predominantly Eurosceptic Shadow Cabinet whose members would have their full say in policy-making. He needs to restate his real track record in robustly attacking the higher lunacies of the EU. He needs to remind undecided MPs that, on issues from the IRA to free-market economic policies, he is no Gilmourite, wet, left-winger. He needs to show that he can develop new policies for the public services appropriate to the 21st century.

In return, of course, his party needs to wake up. At present Mr Duncan Smith is beginning to look likeliest to win the final contest. Mr Duncan Smith is an open and decent man who could yet surprise as a leader. But recent history suggests that he will go the way of the predecessor he most resembles, the resilient and arguably cleverer William Hague, and that a sizeable pro-European section of the party will simply walk away. After one catastrophic defeat that might be a risk worth taking. After two of them, it looks very like a refusal by Conservative MPs to recover what was historically the party's greatest single asset, its ruthless, visceral appetite for power.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk