By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent

The trouble with the Tory Party is it's going through that phase where on occasion it looks as if it's more interested in fighting itself than in fighting Labour Steve Norris

"No I haven't actually," he cheerily replies. "I really ought to turn my face completely on this and say 'Don't be ridiculous, just keep on doing what you're doing'."

So is it powerlust drawing the former transport minister back to the political frontline?

"Well of course every politician is part-altruist, part-egotist," he concedes.

"I genuinely want to work for a better London and I'm also sure that even suggesting I should stand implies a degree of egotism which is probably breathtakingly implausible.

"But hey, show me a politician who's any different."

No apology for rail firm links

He takes the same frank approach to questions about his non-executive directorship of Jarvis, one of the rail firms involved in the controversial Tube public-private partnership.

London's congestion charge begins on 17 February

"The companies I work for are excellent companies and if I weren't proud of working for them I wouldn't do so," Mr Norris declares.

"God knows, the day anybody criticises somebody for working in the private sector, you might as well hang your boots up."

But his mayoral hopes are vulnerable over Jarvis, as his rivals are fully aware. And just last week Nina Bawden, the novelist whose husband died in the Potters Bar rail crash, named Mr Norris as one of the guilty men responsible (Jarvis was linked to the crash).

"Because she's heard of me," he counters. "I have every sympathy for Nina Bawden. She lost her husband. I don't want to comment any further except to say I don't suppose anyone in that position would act any differently."

Ken Livingstone's Poll Tax

Mr Norris doesn't have the Tory nomination quite yet; he is down to the last two contenders - the other is GLA member Roger Evans - but is widely expected to win it on 16 February.

If he does, he will get stuck in at once: the following day London Mayor Ken Livingstone's congestion charge for the capital begins.

If persuasion doesn't work, you are going to have to face other alternatives, one of which is to swallow hard and accept the terrible inequities involved in a single bout, hopefully, of women-only shortlists Steve Norris on selecting parliamentary candidates

The mayor's opponents are rubbing their hands in anticipation. According to Mr Norris, he has chosen the wrong technology, is introducing his flagship scheme in a half-baked fashion, and the resulting mess will turn other cities off the very idea of congestion charging.

"He's blowing the opportunity, and he's making it very difficult to revisit this in London," he says.

Amid all the speculation about Poll Tax-style "can't pay, won't pay" resistance to the scheme, Mr Norris is relishing the "delicious irony that effectively the precedent set by people like Ken Livingstone towards the community charge has been turned on him".

"He's going to get himself in he position where he's got hundreds of thousands of unpaid tickets and in the end he'll be forced to cancel the whole lot, literally," he predicts.

"When it gets to a million tickets he might well have to have an amnesty. Whether the scheme could even survive that, I just don't know."

He will, it is clear, enjoy seeing how Mr Livingstone cracks down on non-payers.

"If they are immediately rounded up and shot, I imagine people will from then on actually comply. But if six months down the line non-payers are still being rather ineffectually chased around the block, then I suspect frankly nobody will pay."

'Febrile' Tory Party

On his way to the final run-off for the Tory nomination, traditionalists in the party formed a small Stop Norris bandwagon, backing a rival hopeful - Nikki Page - who cried foul when she failed to make it to the final ballot.

Ken Livingstone: Steve Norris aims to unseat the London mayor

"The trouble with the Tory Party is it's going through that phase where on occasion it looks as if it's more interested in fighting itself than in fighting Labour," sighs the famously progressive (most voters remember him chiefly for having had five mistresses) Mr Norris.

"I accept that that's part of that rather febrile state that parties get themselves into."

He has, however, been the subject of intermittent speculation that he might "do a Shaun Woodward" and switch sides to Labour.

He dismisses talk of defection: "People in the country think that that [inclusive] kind of approach is some kind of craven Blairism, selling out real Toryism."

"That's absurd.

"Someone asked me if I was worried about the Tory Party rejecting me because they thought I was too progressive.

"My answer is if they don't want me, that would tell you everything there is to know about the party and one of its potential candidates... [But] I'm comfortable in my skin as a Tory."

Time for all-women shortlists

But he is not at all comfortable with the face of the Tory Party and is among those impatient for action to make the Conservatives in parliament better reflect the people whose votes it must win.

"I'm absolutely behind Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa May and all the others in the Tory Party hierarchy who claim they will persuade constituencies and chairmen and executives to select more women and ethnic minority candidates," he says.

"All I add is that if you then don't appear to have succeeded, there is then a choice."

That choice is a tough one, but Mr Norris believes it cannot be avoided: "If persuasion doesn't work, then I'm sorry, however unpalatable, you are going to have to face other alternatives, one of which is to swallow hard and accept the terrible inequities involved in a single bout, hopefully, of women-only shortlists.

"In other words, discrimination, but with a very clear purpose."