"WOULD you put your shirt on a party that can't keep its trousers on?" the Labour supporters gleefully asked the Beckenham electorate, as their "embarrassing" Tory MP, Mr Piers Merchant, resisted the party hierarchy's demands for his head, following allegations of an affair with a 17 year old Soho nightclub hostess.

Once again the Conservative Party is dogged by sleaze allegations. The last two weeks have seen more twists and turns than a soap opera, with the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, surely rueing the day that he opted to go for the longest election campaign this century.

To date, two Tory MPs (Mr Tim Smith and Mr Allan Stewart) have been forced to resign within a week, at least two more are expected to go over the next few days, one prospective parliamentary candidate has stood down after it was revealed he was wanted in the US for drink driving offences and traditionally loyal newspapers are demanding the heads of several more "sleazeridden" MPs.

And we've still got another four weeks of campaigning to go. Not surprisingly, Mr David Hill, Labour's chief press officer, predicts the issue will dominate the whole election campaign, with party officials particularly keen to exploit Mr Major's inability to deal with his wayward colleagues and impotence in failing to force any of them to resign until the damage has been done.

"Sleaze will be seen as one of the things that brings the government down," he said.

Clearly exasperated that their "honest John" campaign strategy has been tarnished by the greed and lust of a few Tory MPs, the party hierarchy has made no attempt to support the beleaguered Mr Merchant, who is married with two children.

One senior Tory source said: "He will go. It's like pulling teeth, painful but necessary. It is just a matter of time and this cannot drag on. We cannot afford it to dominate the headlines and overshadow our policies."

Of course the whole thing was a set up. A £30,000 cliche ridden tabloid sting, with the 17 year old Miss Anna Cox willingly revealing over a fivepage spread in the Sun newspaper just how she was Mr Merchant's "plaything".

Tabloid cameras were poised, capturing every illicit moment. The passionate kiss on a park bench, the hand in hand stroll in the countryside, even apparently the moment when Miss Cox performed a sexual act on the MP in a public place. Fortunately we were spared this picture.

Conveniently, Miss Cox was always holding a copy of a newspaper, to pin down the dates of the photographs if necessary. "I am not old enough to vote, but I am old enough to know when I am being used," she declared.

In the classic tradition of Tory sex scandals, Mr Merchant persuaded his supportive wife, Helen, to face the press, kissing her passionately and even making the crass suggestion that they posed for pictures kissing on a park bench.

Even hardened tabloid journalists flinched at that. "You have a weird sense of values if you see anything wrong with me kissing a girl in the park," he insisted after denying any allegation of an affair, claiming instead Miss Cox was merely a friend.

Perhaps the British electorate and the Conservative Party do have a "weird sense of values": after all Mr Major appears to believe an MP who has had an affair should resign, while those who took "cash for questions" are still considered honourable politicians.

"We are swimming against a tide of sleaze. We said we would hit the ground running, but instead we have hit the ground," admitted one cabinet minister.

And yet this spectacle of Tory MPs clinging to their political careers by their fingertips need not have happened if Mr Major had had the foresight to allow parliament to sit until the publication of the official investigation into the "cash for questions" affair.

Instead, leaked extracts of the report were printed in the Guardian newspaper last week, revealing question marks over the behaviour of 10 Tory MPs.

Mr Major's insistence that the revelations were "total and complete junk" is hard to accept since most of it was based upon their own evidence to the inquiry.

"If they had a shred of honour about them they would resign now. But that's a bit like asking skunks to use deodorant," said the Sun's editorial.

Initially the two former ministers at the heart of the cash for questions affair, Mr Tim Smith and Mr Neil Hamilton, believed they could survive the onslaught, particularly as they both represent safe Tory seats and Mr Major publicly gave his support.

But Mr Smith, who confessed he had failed to declare up to £25,000 sterling in cash from Mr Mohammed al Fayed, for asking 17 questions about the sale of Harrods, suddenly decided to resign this week in the "best interests" of the party.

Not surprisingly his decision has increased the pressure on Mr Hamilton a former trade minister, to also go quietly, with party activists claiming it would take "only a puff of wind" to oust him.

However, they have underestimated Mr Hamilton. This is the man who has admitted receiving £10,000 sterling, and failing to declare the cash to parliament let alone the taxman, enjoying free hospitality at Mr Fayed's hotel in Paris and then arguing that the true value of his stay at the Ritz was actually only £400 rather than £4,000, because everything was so grossly overpriced and disguising other payments as paintings and furniture.

"Sleaze will be exposed as the hoax of the century," he defiantly declared.

To add to Mr Major's woes, Mr Max Clifford, the PR guru who is behind most tabloid revelations, ominously warned that there were more Tory scandals to come. "If Anna Cox's story was worth £30,000 then this one would be worth £100,000," he predicted.