Michael Heseltine has claimed he was speaking for a "huge number" of former Conservative voters when he called for the party to ditch its leader Iain Duncan Smith.

It's no use simply burying your head in the sand and saying simply kick out Heseltine Lord Heseltine

Lord Heseltine dismissed furious calls from grassroots activists for him to be expelled from the party after he attacked Mr Duncan Smith in a newspaper interview.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the former deputy prime minister repeated his claim that the party did not stand a "ghost of a chance" of winning the next election without a change of leader.

His comments were dismissed on Monday as "irrelevant" by Mr Duncan Smith.

'Serial assassin'

But former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit went on the attack, accusing Lord Heseltine of deliberately attempting to sabotage the party at a time when it should be scoring heavily against Labour.

He accused Lord Heseltine of being a "serial assassin of Conservative leaders".

"He went for Mrs Thatcher, he went for William Hague and now he wants to get Iain Duncan Smith.

"What he is doing is getting Tony Blair off the hook", Lord Tebbit told Today.

The former Tory chairman admitted he had also been critical of Mr Duncan Smith's leadership, but said it would be "totally absurd and irrational" to get rid of him.

He accused Lord Heseltine of wanting Labour to win the next election, as it would further his pro-euro agenda.

'Influence'

Lord Heseltine was unrepentant, claiming people "of very significant influence in the Conservative Party" were saying "something had to be done" about Mr Duncan Smith.

Clarke's pro-euro views are not popular with party members

"Is there anybody out there saying what a wonderful job the Opposition is doing in exposing the Labour government?"

"They are saying exactly the opposite", Lord Heseltine told Today.

He said the Conservatives had "to produce a leadership which attracts new people to the party and gets our support back to where you traditionally expect it to be in mid-term.

"And it's no use simply burying your head in the sand and saying simply kick out Heseltine.

"I am speaking for a huge number of people who voted Tory but no longer do."

In his interview, with the Independent Lord Heseltine throws his weight behind a Ken Clarke and Michael Portillo "dream ticket".

He acknowledged that under the current leadership rules, which give the final say on who should be leader to the membership, it would be impossible to install pro-European Mr Clarke in the top job.

'Aberration'

But he said: "The parliamentary party should say, 'Those are the rules of the party as a whole, but we are going to have a separate leader for the parliamentary party'.

"They would then choose Ken Clarke. I suspect also that this would bring Michael Portillo back into the front line."

It would be a "constitutional aberration", but was aimed at helping the party recover.

Lord Heseltine, a keen Europhile, was dismissive of the party membership, suggesting that MPs would have selected Mr Clarke as William Hague's successor had it not been for the final choice going to the Eurosceptic activists.

'Unite' call

"You are dealing with a small number of people - the party members - with an average age of 67, who are obsessed with this issue of Europe," says Lord Heseltine.

"The members of the Conservative Party are repeating in a worrying way what happened to the Labour Party in the early 1980s.

"They have closed in on themselves and withdrawn to the more extreme wing of the party."

Last month Mr Duncan Smith issued a stern warning to Tory rebels that they should unite behind him if the party was to be taken seriously.

His message came little more than a year after he had won a leadership ballot of the 350,000 party members.