BRITAIN: The British Conservative Party leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, was under siege last night after his "unite or die" challenge to his colleagues saw the bookmakers slash the odds on his survival.
Usually reliable sources at Westminster claimed the necessary 25 signatures to trigger a no-confidence move against Mr Duncan Smith had already been collected secretly as the embattled Tory leader sought to mobilise his party activists against MPs he believed out to undermine him.
Mr Duncan Smith made his dramatic pitch for grassroots support following Monday night's rebellion over the shadow cabinet's opposition to adoption by unmarried and gay couples.
Following the resignation of Mr John Bercow from the front bench over the issue, two former ministers, Mr Michael Portillo and Mr Kenneth Clarke, led eight Conservative MPs into the lobbies against the party line, while six shadow cabinet ministers were among five MPs who failed to vote. Mr Portillo went further and spoke against Mr Duncan Smith's three-line whip, contrasting it with his conference pledge to modernise the party.
Mr Duncan Smith's panicky response was to cancel his diary and call an emergency press conference to make a personal statement.
For a few MPs, he declared, Monday night's vote "was not about adoption but an attempt to challenge my mandate to lead this party". The party, he insisted, could not go on in this fashion. "We have to pull together or we will hang apart. If we are to be taken seriously as an opposition, as an alternative government for this country, we have to work together," he said.
And he asserted: "I cannot allow the efforts of a dedicated team in parliament or hundreds of thousands of hard-working volunteers to be sabotaged by self-indulgence or indiscipline. My message is simple and stark: unite or die."
However, that tactic appeared to backfire as critics recalled Mr Duncan Smith's own personal rebellion against the Major government over the Maastricht Treaty, and Mr Portillo and Mr Clarke angrily denied any ulterior motive in Monday night's vote.
Mr Clarke said: "It would be very much easier to unite as a party if Iain Duncan Smith would refrain from imposing three-line whips on subjects which have always been left to the judgment of individual MPs."
By implication referring to Mr Duncan Smith's own past disloyalty, Mr Portillo said: "I voted against a three-line whip for the first time in my life because I believed it was wrong and inconsistent to use coercion on adoption, and that was my only reason for doing so.
"I reject entirely the unwarranted misinterpretation of the motives of those MPs who were unable to support the party line."
Another rebel, Mr Anthony Steen, was more direct, referring to his leader's record of voting "50 times in rebellion against Maastricht", and describing him as "murally dyslexic". Mr Steen explained: "It means he doesn't see the writing on the wall.
"He would see this message - that the party and the MPs desperately want him to succeed, but everything he is doing is actually making that impossible."
Even normally loyal Tories privately conceded that Mr Duncan Smith had made a gross strategic error in seeking to impose a three-line whip on what would normally be considered a "conscience" issue, for a vote which he was always going to lose.
And party insiders were equally critical of yesterday's self-generated crisis response to what had not in fact proved to be among the most significant rebellions in parliamentary history. It also became very clear yesterday that Mr Duncan Smith's early parliamentary rebellions over Europe are inhibiting his appeal now to party loyalty and duty.
Sensing that - and the unlikely prospect that Mr Duncan Smith can swing "floating" voters behind his leadership, when more Conservatives are dissatisfied than satisfied - Ladbroke's was last night offering 3-1 on Mr Duncan Smith quitting before Christmas.
The betting company made the party chairman, Mrs Theresa May, and her predecessor, Mr David Davis, joint favourites to replace him, with a spokesman claiming a lot of market interest in the next Conservative leader.
The bookmakers also listed Mr Clarke at 7-1 and Mr Portillo at 10-1 - while one punter placed a bet on Mr William Hague's return at 100-1.