Seb Coe set to enter Mayoral race

Former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe is seriously considering joining the race to be London's next Mayor as the Tory candidate.

Lord Coe, who until the last election was a close aide and judo partner of ex-Tory leader William Hague, is thought to be ready to make an announcement in about six weeks.

Up to now, it was assumed that the Tory nomination would automatically go to former transport minister Steve Norris, who came second to Ken Livingstone in the 2000 mayoral contest.

If Lord Coe, who lost his parliamentary seat to Labour in 1997, enters the race the Conservatives would face a run-off between two relatively recognisable figures. The double gold-medal winner is being urged to put his name forward by his friends, including Daley Thompson, another dual Olympic champion. Some Tories think Lord Coe has the profile to mount a serious challenge to Mr Livingstone, but others warn that his clean-cut image might struggle against the Mayor's streetwise persona.

A declaration of interest by Lord Coe around the time of the Tory conference would be a welcome diversion for the party from the infighting which has broken out over Iain Duncan Smith's leadership. Modernisers were forced to rally round Mr Duncan Smith today after he was savaged from both wings of his fractious party.

Lord Tebbit demanded a purge of the "squabbling children" at the Tories' Central Office HQ, singling out chief executive Mark MacGregor, 41, and strategy director Dominic Cummings, 30. From the Left-leaning wing, Nicholas Soames attacked the party for its "mad obsession with gays, blacks and women".

But Francis Maude, a key moderniser and supporter of former defence secretary Michael Portillo, said: "Iain has set his colours and rightly he has decided, as many of us have, that there is a new political terrain."