BRITAIN: David Cameron has denied planning to humiliate rival David Davis if, as expected, he wins the Conservative leadership ballot, the result of which will be announced today.
The one-time-outsider now tipped to succeed Michael Howard by a wide margin acted to calm fears of an outbreak of party warfare after weekend reports that he intends to strip Mr Davis of his high-profile home affairs portfolio and reduce him in the new Tory pecking order by making him defence spokesman.
Mr Davis's campaign team yesterday maintained they could win a surprise victory and were still working on a programme for his first 100 days if he became leader.
However the bookmakers are resigned to being today's other big losers, to the reported tune of £1 million (€1.4 million), when the votes of the party's 253,000 members are counted.
With one survey of Tory activists suggesting Mr Cameron is set to win by a margin of two to one, his campaign manager George Osborne yesterday sought to defuse the threatened row over Mr Cameron's choices for a new-look shadow cabinet.
"David Davis has fought a very good campaign and there is absolutely no intention to humiliate him," insisted Mr Osborne. "I want him, and indeed David Cameron wants him, to be a very active part of a new leadership."
At the same time a spokesman for Mr Cameron said he had not approved the weekend briefings, about which Mr Cameron was said to be angry.
"He [ Mr Cameron] has made it clear he wants to unify the party. He wants a shadow cabinet of 'all the talents' and he believes that should include David Davis.
"He has said that he sees David Davis playing a prominent role in the shadow cabinet. No matter what happens, the party at large would expect either David to offer the other David a senior role."
However, Mr Cameron has declined to reciprocate Mr Davis's suggestion that the second-placed candidate might expect to be offered the deputy leadership.
Meanwhile speculation about the return of former leader William Hague as shadow foreign secretary has further underlined the limited options open to a new Tory leader intent on modernising his senior front bench team.
Mr Cameron's need to do so could also collide with the need to balance factions and maintain unity, as evidenced by the weekend reports that he was considering replacing Mr Davis with Dr Liam Fox, who finished third in the leadership contest and is regarded by some as the real leader of the Tory right.