Questions over Howard aide

As queen bee of the so-called Notting Hill set of bright young Conservatives, Rachel Whetstone carries the air of a woman completely at ease with wealth and power. Among the clique of ambitious west London Tories who dine, drink and holiday with each other, she occupies a special position as Michael Howard's closest female aide, often dubbed "the second most important woman in Howard's life" after his wife Sandra.

This week, Ms Whetstone, 37, is licking her wounds after colliding with the rougher end of politics. For two days, the friendships, loyalties and grand designs of the Notting Hill set have been pored over and laid bare after senior backbenchers reacted furiously to an apparent attempt by one of them to speed up the retirement of "bed-blocker" MPs.

It has emerged that Ms Whetstone played an unwitting but key role in turning an embarrassing incident into a humiliating expose of her circle of friends.

The episode began when her friend George Trefgarne, the comment editor of the Daily Telegraph, ran an article accusing "lazy, middle-aged" MPs of hogging safe seats which should be given over to the bright young things jostling to become the next generation of Tory leaders.

The article was fatally flawed. Two of those accused of idleness had major heart surgery recently.

Within hours, senior backbencher Derek Conway, one of those named by Trefgarne, was on the phone to Mr Howard's office demanding a full denial of the claims, which included an allegation that chief whip David MacLean wanted the "bed-blockers" to move aside.

Ms Whetstone tried to take over. According to Mr Conway, she called him and urged him not to press for a retraction. "She told me to take it on the chin and let it all die down, which I was not prepared to do.

"I remember her words exactly. She said she and George were very close friends and I should not overreact. But I was not prepared to lie down and I told her that her friend was not doing the Tory Party much good."

The outcome was that Mr Conway took the matter into his own hands by giving a radio interview pinning the article squarely on what he dubbed "the Notting Hill set".

As one Conservative candidate belonging to a rival faction gleefully commented: "They are toast, those

people, now they have been identified." But who is Ms Whetstone - and why is she deemed so important by Mr Howard that he was once said to have declared he would only stand for Tory leader if she was available to run his private office?

The leggy brunette was educated at Benenden, one of the most exclusive private girls' schools, and graduated from Bristol University where she became a card-carrying Tory.

After leaving university she spent three years working in the Conservative Research Department where, say contemporaries, she shone.

MR Howard then scooped her up to become one of two special advisers in his private office during his stormy years as Home Secretary. Her role was officially confined to policy-making but her real value was as a trusted and very candid adviser on how he presented himself.

During this period a whiff of scandal attached itself to her name when former Tory MP David Faber divorced his wife Sally Faber, naming James Hewitt as her lover. Ms Faber's friends accused the MP of hypocrisy because he was at the same time stepping out with Ms Whetstone, then aged 26.

By now, Ms Whetstone had made the key friendships that form the nucleus of the Notting Hill set today. Most important of these is David Cameron, another former special adviser, now an MP. She is godmother to his first child and, yes, he lives squarely inside Notting Hill, not far from her own home. Some believe Ms Whetstone and her allies see themselves, like New Labour, as a new generation destined to inherit their party.

Alastair Campbell wrote last year: "I've seen plenty of evidence that his (Howard's) senior aide Rachel Whetstone has plundered the new Labour speech-making lexicon and event-management handbook, but I've seen nothing that begins to resemble a strategy likely to persuade the public that he or his party has changed."

In 2001, Ms Whetstone stayed with Mr Howard for his first, disastrous attempt to win the Conservative leadership. She left to work in public relations and was a highly paid lobbyist for Portland PR when his next opportunity came last November.

She was on holiday in Ecuador when the leadership "coronation" got under way and flew home in a hurry to answer his call for help.

She resigned her job instantly and prepared to run his office, just like in the old days.

The Notting Hill set see themselves as the party's future. But Mr Howard has just suffered a disastrous few weeks, in which he flopped against Tony Blair in the Iraq debate and ended up level-pegging with the Liberal Democrats in one opinion poll.

The mishandling of the bedblocker affair is another massive setback. The question now haunting Tory MPs, aghast at the latest bout of feuding, is whether Ms Whetstone and her glittering friends are as clever as they think they are.