Defence Secretary Michael Portillo will seek to restore his image, dented severely by his jingoistic performance last year. None rate Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine's chances any more ("the lion is getting mangy" is a typical view) and few are willing to punt on Kenneth Clarke. His politics seem to trundle down the middle, yet he is acceptable to the right, too."Younger MPs concur, but speak of him as a leader-after-next, rather than a successor. He is regarded as having done a much better job in the principality than his predecessor, John Redwood. "Hague is the guy who must set out his stall," said an old warhorse in the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs "At present, he is everybody's favourite.

In private, they talk of little else.A discreet sample of back-bench opinion has come up with some very interesting conclusions. First, and by almost universal consent, watch out for William Hague, the Welsh Secretary and youngest member of the Cabinet, who will appear tomorrow morning to talk about keeping the Kingdom United. How does Michael Howard outflank Jack Straw on the Right? Can Kenneth Clarke be more of an Iron Chancellor than Gordon Brown says he will be?The answer is that they must, because the real, unpublished agenda at Bournemouth is: who will succeed John Major? Officially, MPs and constituency "representatives" (they hate to be called delegates) are sworn to a mafia- style omerta. The conference agenda, already published, promises a succession of ministers strutting their stuff and showing how much more tough they are, or caring, or whatever they have to be to look more competent than their Labour shadows It will not be easy. The received wisdom on the back-benches is that if John Major falls off his soap-box and loses, he will be gone within a week. "Why should he hang around and take all the flak?" asked one Major loyalist.

(The actual words used were rather more earthy.) "He'll go off to make some money from his memoirs." The next six days, therefore, will be critical for the would-be premiers jostling for pole position. The election for the leadership of the Conservative Party that, on present trends, will immediately follow the other one. As They gather in blustery Bournemouth, the Tory faithful are understandably obsessed about the election No, no, not the general election. Mr Ivieson's advice: turn it into a bookcase; cut it in two and make a bedside table and a tea-table; or best of all, leave it as it is.After the serial, Under the Red Robe, Mr Ivieson announced the programme was being listened to by a panel representing a cross-section of women's interests: Miss Margaret Bendfield, former minister of labour, Miss Deborah Kerr, the film star, and Mrs Elsie May Crump, "wife of a butcher from Chorlton-cum-Hardy" They would be giving their verdict the next day The Inkspots sang "Whispering Grass" And an institution was born.. "Of course one can't wear one's best clothes for scrubbing the floor... But one can devise a neat and becoming sort of uniform for the job." Hair was a particular problem, she said, particularly with the dust from beaten carpets.Mrs Louise Donald of Aberdeen asked how to make best use of that old- fashioned item of furniture, the Whatnot.

When I get home I've very likely got the downstairs rooms to mop and dust - I can do this, and keep an eye on the herrings as they cook."After "If I Had My Way" by Bing Crosby, for Mrs Groome, of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and "Starlight Serenade" by Vera Lynn for Mrs Mitchell of Dennistoun, Glasgow, Mrs Kay Beattie gave a talk on make-up and grooming entitled "putting your best face forward"."There's no reason why one shouldn't look nice always," she said. A minority, including those who bought starter homes or some types of council property in the late 1980s, are unlikely to see an end to their problems even then. Despite the past year's housing market recovery, for many it will take at least another 12 months of rising prices before their homes are worth more than the mortgages they owe on them, according to experts. More than 500,000 homeowners in Britain are tied to their existing home by the spectre of negative equity. They also represent a minority of insurers at the bottom, where many of the poor performers are proprietary companies.The excellent performance of mutuals raises fundamental questions about whose interests are being served by the trend towards abandoning this long established form of ownership.. It costs money and the potential gain from a shares handout is unlikely to be worth the costs of setting up and then discontinuing a policy.The greatest irony is that Norwich Union is among a large number of mutual life insurers serving their policyholders better than conventional insurance companies owned by outside shareholders.An analysis for the Independent by John Chapman, a former senior official at the Office of Fair Trading, shows that at the top of performance league tables, mutuals outnumber proprietary companies by a wide margin. Earlier this year, Standard Life admitted that a senior employee had been seconded by the company to examine the implications of demutualising.Prospective "carpetbaggers" hoping to benefit from any expected flotation or takeover should bear in mind that setting up a pension scheme or taking out life cover is a much longer-term proposition than the simple act of opening a building society account.