IF the Tories want advice as to who should be their next leader, they shouldn't bother asking other Tories. For a start there are hardly enough of them left to make a decent-sized focus group.

They would do better polling Labour and Liberal Democrat voters, because they are the ones they must win over, or become the Eddie The Eagle of politics.

As a Labour supporter who voted Lib Dem in the last election, due partly to disillusionment with the Government and partly because I live in Ryedale for goodness sake, the Tories should be asking my opinion. They haven't. I'm going to give it anyway.

Ken Clarke should be their next leader. But before we come on to the reasons why, let's eliminate his rivals. This shouldn't take long.

Michael Portillo is the favourite. Why? Because he gives the Conservative ladies a hot flush under their blue rinses.

Nothing else accounts for the popularity of this most morally elastic of politicians.

As a child, Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo worshipped Harold Wilson, a baffling crush that even Old Labourites would distrust. He was also a pacifist. The lurch to the right happened at Cambridge University.

Portillo vociferously championed the fairness of the poll tax, then backed its successor, the council tax, with equal vim. Despite being the son of a Spanish refugee, he banged the anti-foreigner drum as loudly as anyone in his party, most revoltingly in his 1994 conference speech.

In a later leadership contest he publicly supported John Major while privately installing a campaign office ready to oppose him in the second round.

After being ousted in the 1997 rout of everything he stood for, Portillo did his most famous U-turn, saying that the Tories slogan should be "who cares wins".

No one knew whether to laugh, cry or vomit. Most involuntarily opted for the latter.

This fabrication of a man, whose beliefs are as sturdy as that quiff in a hailstorm, even had the nerve to describe cynicism as the "new British disease". He should know.

In this post-Prescott-punch era, the electorate is after a more human brand of politics.

Sorry, Mike mate, your revelation of a gay past was too calculating to up your appeal. You're just too... oily.

So we move on to Iain Duncan Smith/David Davis. It's very hard to tell them apart. Five years separate them (Davis, at 52, is the elder), and both make much of their services background. Davis was an SAS reservist, and Duncan Smith served in the Scots Guards for six years. Both love sport: mountaineering for Davis, rugby and shooting - though not yet at the same time - for Duncan Smith. Both are Eurosceptic right wingers (and that really went down well on June 7).

There are only two differences, as far as I can tell.

First, Davis was born in York, always a political bonus, just ask Frank Dobson.

Second, Duncan Smith is bald (and that really went down well on June 7).

Through a process of elimination, therefore, it has to be Kenneth Clarke. But there are many positive reasons to endorse him, too.

He has real political clout; he is unspun to the extent that he still wears Hush Puppies; he is funny, clever and popular; he is true to himself but not disloyal to his party; he's a family man; and he supports the same football team as me, Nottingham Forest.

Tony Blair would rather face ten Michael Portillos or 100 David Davises than one, larger-than-life Ken Clarke.

But the Daily Telegraph doesn't care for this Europhile, and so those daft bats in the Tory Party will probably vote for someone else. Clarke is destined to be the best man never elected party leader: the Denis Healey of the Conservatives.