Tory defies IDS over far-Right

Iain Duncan Smith today faced a challenge to his authority as a Tory MP flouted an order to sever links with the far Right.

Andrew Hunter, MP for Basingstoke, said he would carry on as a patron of Right Now!, a magazine which opposes immigration and has links to French extremist Jean-Marie le Pen.

The publication is also close to the Monday Club, a Rightwing grouping which the Conservative leader has banned his MPs from joining.

Tory chairman David Davis ducked a question on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about Mr Hunter's role at Right Now! Later the party appeared in disarray, with Central Office unable to say whether the MP would be disciplined. Mr Hunter defended his stance, saying Right Now! was an "excellent magazine" and telling The Independent: "I'm an historic patron and I have been trying to give it moral encouragement, but I have not recently given any support in cash or kind."

Mr Duncan Smith was forced to sack shadow farms minister Ann Winterton on Sunday, when she refused to resign after telling a racist joke at a rugby club dinner.

A new Right-wing pressure group, the Conservative Democratic Alliance, today threatened to expose shadow cabinet members' links to the far Right unless Mr Duncan Smith softens his line on extremists.

Mr Hunter is one of three Tory MPs who quit the Monday Club last year after they were instructed to do so by the leadership. During last year's Tory leadership contest, Mr Duncan Smith included Mr Hunter in a list of his supporters. But the MP's name was later deleted from the IDS campaign website following publicity about his views.

Today Mr Davis played down the row, saying: "I don't think Right Now! is in any direct sense anything to do with the Conservative Party. It is not an organisation I have much to do with, and certainly not one I've talked to."

He said the ban on MPs joining the Monday Club could be lifted if its members stopped bringing the Tories into disrepute. Some of its recent publications, he said, had been "beyond the pale".