Duncan Smith considers Tory leadership bid

Iain Duncan Smith has confirmed he is considering joining the Conservative Party leadership race.

Just hours after Michael Portillo became the first confirmed candidate, Mr Duncan Smith said he was thinking about challenging his colleague for the right to lead the party.

The Shadow defence secretary told Channel Four he believed party activists wanted a choice when the time came to cast their votes.

He said: "I am looking carefully at what is going on.

"I am listening to a lot of people, I am taking soundings, but I am also talking to people who perhaps voted Conservative but weren't members of the Conservative Party, and some that didn't, and I'm just trying to get a sense of what their views are on this."

The Chingford and Woodford Green MP dismissed suggestions that the party was in the process of burying the Thatcherite legacy.

"I think Thatcherism isn't buried in so far as it is there as a model for how you change a party from what was then given the consensus - it became something different. And times change, you move on.

"What happened in the mid-70s and took us through the 80s was profound in exactly the same way as we will have to change and move into the 21st century."

He went on: "What you do is you learn from history, you don't bury it. Changes need to be made both to parties and, not (to) their core beliefs, but how you apply those beliefs, to things like the public services."

Mr Duncan Smith welcomed the endorsement of Lord Tebbit, who recently praised his conventional family lifestyle: "I'm very happy to have anyone's comments that are kind and pleasant."