THE Tory leadership race took an unusual twist last night when the two youngest contenders were urged to hold back for a few years by an ally of David Davis, the favourite.

Andrew Mitchell, newly promoted to the Shadow Cabinet, advised David Cameron, 38, and George Osborne, 33, to bide their time.

The intervention from Mr Mitchell, MP for Sutton Coldfield and a long-standing friend of Mr Davis, came in an interview with The Times.

Mr Mitchell, whose family is steeped in the wine trade, having owned El Vino wine merchants in Fleet Street for many years, said it would be a shame to spoil a good claret by opening it too soon. “Someone recently gave me a bottle of Château Latour 2000. I think it would be wiser for me to leave it in the bottle for quite a few years yet before I open it, and I would give the same advice to some of the younger leadership contenders,” he said.

His comment suggests that Mr Davis, 57, would use his lengthy experience in government and opposition as a trump card if he is challenged by either Mr Cameron or Mr Osborne for the job.

Mr Mitchell is likely to act as Mr Davis’s campaign manager when the leadership fight begins in the autumn. The two men became friends when they served as government whips in the dark days of the Maastrict rebellions in 1992 and 1993, when they spent long nights dragging Tories out of the bars of Westminster to vote.

Mr Mitchell, 49, lost his seat in the 1997 Labour landslide and returned to Lazard, the investment firm, and a handful of directorships for four years. The period coincided with a City boom, making Mr Mitchell a small fortune.

Mr Davis has been careful to stay out of the spotlight since Michael Howard resigned after the election, determined not to be seen as too pushy for the leadership. But Mr Mitchell, the new International Development spokesman, set out his views yesterday on the future of the party.

Describing himself as a classic One Nation Tory, he believes that the problems faced by the Conservative Party are not on the scale of those confronting Labour in the 1980s. There is nothing to be gained from “tearing up our history”, but values do have to be updated, be said.

“We need to place Tory values — of service, the small State, nationhood and helping those who can’t, not those who won’t — we need to place those long-held Tory principles in a modern setting,” he said.

He is eager to embrace new thinking on health and education. “There has been a lack of confidence in approaching the health and education agenda and it is interesting to note that this agenda was first addressed by David (Davis) when he was chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. He was one of the first Conservatives to grasp this point,” he said.

New Tory thinking, which includes a form of voucher system, is “enormously exciting”. “It has the ability to resonate the way right-to-buy did for council house owners, spreading power and ownership as widely as possible throughout society,” he said.

There are still virtually no Conservative MPs in inner-city areas and Mr Mitchell is one of only a few to represent metropolitan areas outside London.

“Unless the Tory party has something to say to those who live in inner cities, in bad housing with poor health and education prospects and high crime, then the Tory party is not going to flourish. We have to be the party for those people as much as any other part of Britain.”

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