RENEWED warfare over Europe, and revived speculation about Mr John Major's leadership yesterday overshadowed the Tory Party's final push to avert a rout in Thursday's local elections.
Political observers say the party stands to lose between 400 and 600 of the 1,166 seats it is defending.
Meanwhile, Dr Brian Mawhinney, the Conservative Party chairman, was forced on to the defensive after claims that between 60 and 100 Tory MPs are planning to defy the government line on Europe with "go it alone" manifestos at the next general election.
Although suggestions of a rebel Euro sceptic manifesto were thought wide of the mark, a secret survey of members of the right wing 92 Group suggested many MPs plan personalised manifestos. These would make plain their opposition to a single European currency, and their support for a referendum on Britain's relationship with Europe.
This disclosure followed the weekend prediction by Mr George Walden, a retiring Conservative MP, that the party would split after a general election defeat.
The government line, expected to be enshrined in the party manifesto, is to leave open the option of joining a single currency, and to hold a referendum should the government of the day decide to do so.
But tensions over Europe are rising again, as ministers and MPs consider how to counter the threat posed by Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party, which plans to field some 600 candidates on the "who governs Britain" issue.
A study commissioned by Lord (Jeffrey) Archer has concluded that Sir James's anti EU campaign could "turn any foreseeable Conservative majority into a hung parliament ... and any Labour landslide into a rout". Speaking on BBC Radio yesterday, Lord Archer, a former party vice chairman, warned that the Referendum Party could cost the Conservatives 23 seats at the general election.
Dr Mawhinney yesterday dismissed the reports of an organised rebellion against the government line as "hypothetical", having on Sunday shrugged off the threat posed by Sir James Goldsmith. People, he said would not vote in any numbers for a party which didn't even pretend to want to govern.
But he was sharply - contradicted by the former chancellor Mr Norman Lamont, who warned that the planned intervention by the multi millionaire businessman posed a "very great threat" which the party had so far failed to recognise. "We will only encourage Sir James and maximise she damage that he will do to the Conservative Party if we bury our heads in the sand and simply start calling him names".
The chairman of the 92 Group, Mr John Townend, denied the Euro sceptics sought to split the party, and said there was nothing sinister" about the survey. But he made it clear that the right would continue to press the government to declare against a single currency - a move which would finally sunder the party and trigger resignations from the cabinet.
"What is interesting," said Mr Townend, "is that an overwhelming majority (in the 92 Group), are opposed to a single currency in principle as they see it as an irreversible move towards a federal Europe."
As Germans's Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, ate British beef with Mr John Major yesterday at Downing Street, his Health Secretary, Mr Stephen Dorrell, refused to be drawn on weekend stories that he is now the favoured candidate of the Tory left to succeed the Prime Minister after the general election.
Some reports claimed that the previous "left hope", the Chancellor, Mr Kenneth Clarke, has passed, the mantle to Mr Dorrell.