Tories will 'pay the price' for leader

The outburst shatters the Tories' temporary truce

The man responsible for co-ordinating Ken Clarke's Conservative leadership bid has warned that the party would "pay the price" for electing Iain Duncan Smith, who only appeals to "nasty old people".

The centrist Conservative Mainstream group's chief executive, Nick Kent, says that Mr Clarke could never have won the leadership because of the "narrow minded" nature of the party's members.

"Their hatred of gays, blacks, successful women and the European Union is as extraordinary as it is offensive - but they cannot be reasoned with," he writes in The Guardian newspaper.

"Like the Labour activists who chose Foot over Healey in 1981, they have chosen ideological purity over public appeal."

I know from bitter experience that you are no more likely to find clarity in Conservative party rules than you are to find the mechanics of sex described in a Mills and Boon novel - but even I was left stunned by the gaps in procedure

Kenneth Clarke's campaign co-ordinator, Nick Kent

Mr Duncan Smith beat Mr Clarke by 155,933 votes to 100,864.

During the campaign Mr Duncan Smith "reinvented himself as a One Nation Tory, absurdly claimed that he had never suggested Britain should leave the European Union and put forward 'new' policy ideas to give the impression he was a dynamic figure", Mr Kent writes.

But Mr Kent is equally candid about shortcomings in Mr Clarke's leadership campaign.

'Serious deficiency'

The pro-European former chancellor's attempt to give the Eurosceptic Tory membership "a black eye" by suggesting he would not attend a Commons vote on the Nice Treaty was a "disaster", he writes.

Mr Clarke's description of Mr Duncan Smith as a "hanger and flogger" on the BBC's Jimmy Young programme was also "unfortunate because it rather accurately described the views of most party members".

"Clarke is, of course, notorious for not suffering fools gladly," Mr Kent continues.

"This is a serious deficiency in a party full of them."

'Poisoned legacy'

Mr Kent also dismisses former Tory leader William Hague as the worst in the party's history.

His reign amounted to a "teenage cocktail of tabloid populism and raving anti-Europeanism", Mr Kent writes.

And, he continued, Mr Hague's "poisoned legacy" to the party were the rules by which the leadership race was decided.

"I know from bitter experience that you are no more likely to find clarity in Conservative party rules than you are to find the mechanics of sex described in a Mills and Boon novel - but even I was left stunned by the gaps in procedure," Mr Kent concludes.