TWO Tory MPs disclosed last night that they were ready to work for John Kerry, the US Democratic presidential candidate, in his campaign to oust George W. Bush from the White House this autumn.

Their plan, which is understood to have received tacit approval from the party’s high command, is the clearest evidence yet of a growing rift between British Conservatives and their natural right-wing allies among the Republicans.

Alan Duncan, the Tory front-bench spokesman on constitutional affairs, told The Times that he was in correspondence with Mr Kerry’s aides about joining their campaign. “I intend to go over there in the next couple of months,” he said. “It is partly about making links, but I will also help if I can. I want John Kerry to win.”

Although Mr Duncan remains an instinctive supporter of the Republicans, it is understood that he has been dismayed by the influence of “neoconservative” rightwingers in the Pentagon, such as Donald Rumsfeld. He backed the war but feels let down by the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and by the lack of progress in the Middle East peace process.

He is likely to be joined on the Kerry camapign by Simon Burns, the Tory MP for Chelmsford West, who has worked for Mr Kerry in previous elections. “I am probably a bit of an aberration in the Conservative Party in that I have always identifed with the Democrats, but there may be a shift of emphasis going on in our attitude to the current Administration,” Mr Burns said. “I cannot believe myself and Alan are the only Tory MPs who would vote against Bush if we had the chance.”

Although Labour is expected to send two political strategists to the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, they will be present only as observers and will not offer any assistance to the campaign. The Prime Minister notably failed to meet Mr Kerry when he visited America last month for talks with Mr Bush.

Mr Duncan met Mr Kerry as a student at Harvard University during the early 1980s. They met again in London last year when Mr Duncan, then a Tory foreign affairs spokesman, held two hours of private talks with the US senator. “We got on very well and I was impressed,” Mr Duncan said. “We discussed where Osama bin Laden was hiding, and I replied he could be eating beaked beans in a cave somewhere. Only then did I realise he is, of course, married to a Heinz heiress.”

Mr Duncan, a sometimes maverick figure who two years ago became the first Tory MP to declare that he was gay, knows that his views may put him at odds with pro-American Conservatives such as Liam Fox, the party chairman.

He said: “As Tories we are intersted in justice, whether it be for Iraqi PoWs or Palestinians without a state. I think this whole concept of terrorism has been treated too simplistically and when you add Iraq into that equation it becomes even more difficult.”

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