DAVID DAVIS was pursuing a “stealth” strategy to become Tory leader as long ago as 1997, according to the final volume of Alan Clark’s diaries being serialised in The Times this week.

The former Tory chairman, who in recent months has emerged as a rival and potential successor to Iain Duncan Smith, was one of Mr Clark’s closest friends until his death in 1999. In January 1998 Mr Clark wrote of Mr Davis: “Each of us approaching our goal stealthily. Leadership for him, chairman of the ’22 (the Tory backbench committee of MPs) for me.”

Mr Clark’s diaries describe regular “little conclaves” he held with Mr Davis in the last Parliament to discuss, among other things, the failures of William Hague’s leadership. Along with Eric Forth, now Shadow Leader of the Commons, and David Maclean, the Opposition Chief Whip, they saw themselves as the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” on the Tory benches. Mr Davis is quoted in the diaries saying that they had to make much of the running in the Commons together with some of the new MPs because “half the party does not come into the chamber any longer”.

When he returned to Parliament as MP for Kensington and Chelsea in 1997, Mr Clark had lingering hopes of becoming Tory leader. That July the diary records Mr Davis telling him to get a group of young MPs to Saltwood, Mr Clark’s castle, for “an end of term picnic”. The entry ends: “Strange his ‘sponsorship’. What is going on in the back of his mind? Could it be the same sort of thing that lies in mine?” This summer’s reshuffle of the Tory front bench saw Mr Davis ousted as party chairman and forced to accept a more junior post shadowing John Prescott on local government issues — fuelling speculation that the former chairman could launch a leadership bid this Parliament.

Mr Davis has sought since to appear steadfastly loyal, insisting that he is interested only in doing his new job to the best of his ability. Yesterday, however, in his speech to the Tory party conference in Bournemouth, Mr Davis made little attempt to conceal his contempt for modernisers who want to jettison policies on issues such as gay rights, while forcing local associations to select more women and ethnic minority candidates.

He said: “There are no magic levers to get us back to power. There are no golden roads to government. There is only hard work and more hard work. Remaining united and, most of all, having the confidence to argue for what we believe in.”

Alan Clark’s last diaries also contain scathing verdicts on other possible successors to Mr Duncan Smith. In 1998 he dismissed Theresa May, now party chairman, as the “upcoming bête noire . . . the No 1 conventional plug at the moment”.

Kenneth Clarke, who confirmed this week that he still had leadership ambitions, was similarly disdained by Mr Clark, as was Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Home Secretary.

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