BRITAIN: Ken Clarke was last night facing a battle not to be the first casualty of the Tory leadership election.
One of the four runners will be forced out of the race after a vote of MPs next Tuesday.
David Davis and David Cameron look to be well out in front, with Mr Clarke and Liam Fox fighting it out for third place.
Four more MPs came out for Dr Fox last night and his camp insists the momentum is with its man.
Nominations for the leadership closed at noon yesterday and a series of ballots of MPs will now be held.
The candidate with the lowest number of votes will drop out after each ballot until there are just two left. Those two will then be put to a vote of the party membership.
So far, 67 MPs have declared their support for Mr Davis.
Mr Cameron has the backing of 34 after two MPs who supported Mr Clarke in the last leadership election came out for him yesterday.
Mr Clarke has the support of 23.
Dr Fox's new backers take his tally to 20 with the promise of more over the weekend.
With about a dozen of the right-wing Cornerstone group expected to back Dr Fox, his camp is confident it will end up with 30 to 40 backers.
"The first person to go out is not going to be Davis or Cameron," a Fox aide said, "and we are pretty sure now that it is not going to be us either."
Mr Clarke's camp insists Fox aides are talking up his support. They say the other contenders are running scared of Mr Clarke because he is the most popular among party members.
Mr Clarke's camp says all the other candidates are desperate to see him fall before the membership vote.
"Ken can beat Davis and Cameron in the county, Fox can't beat anyone," an aide said.
Mr Clarke's team underlined that claim last night with the announcement that 50 Conservative council group leaders are backing the former chancellor.
In a statement they said: "Ken Clarke is the only candidate with the combination of experience, energy and popular appeal that we need to win again.
"He has been tried and tested in most of the major jobs in government and we trust him to lead us from opposition into government.
"We urge all Conservative MPs to vote for him."
The contenders were yesterday questioned by the spouses of Tory MPs.
All four set out their stalls to a packed private meeting at the House of Commons.
Mr Clarke used the meeting to reinforce his stature as the most popular of the candidates among voters.
He said the desire to win the next election should be the main consideration of members. He was the man most likely to return the Conservatives to government, he claimed.
Mr Clarke said the party should consider having candidate shortlists divided equally between men and women to ensure there were more female MPs.
Dr Fox suggested open primaries to ensure more women candidates.
Mr Davis said Tory wives made a bigger sacrifice than their MP husbands and got no public recognition.
They were often left bringing up their children, he said.
"For them it is even more important that we win the next election - they are the ones who make the sacrifices," he said.
Rachael Robathan, who chairs the Contact group which staged the meeting, said afterwards: "In each of them we have candidates of such leadership qualities that each of them would be an excellent next prime minister."