The exception is Jerry "Gabby" Hayes, talkative as his Hollywood B-movie mentor, who not only thinks that the Government can win the election, but also believes the hard-hats will keep quiet. This is their last opportunity to step down the catwalk before the poll that counts.Since it is virtually political suicide to do so, Tory MPs will not go public on their hunches. Hardliners want John Major to "cut through his ministers' private agendas" and pledge in his conference speech on Friday that no government he leads will scrap the pound and sign up for the euro.Mr Major's spin-doctors insist that "apart from a bit of intellectual positioning on the fringe", the leadership contenders are not going to display themselves in Bournemouth Fat chance. The Chancellor has infuriated Eurosceptics with his mildly-encouraging noises about a single European currency and the possibility that a Tory government might join the first wave of participating countries in 1999. He unveils his manifesto today in Conservative Way Forward, the hard-right journal with a busty blonde on the cover (excuse? she is sitting on a seaside rock alongside "clear blue water"), arguing: "If we had another great tax cutting Budget we will go up in the polls."The Great Clarke Issue is the other item on the unpublished agenda.

He plans a frantic fringe, talking on Tuesday about Winning the Election, the day after at a News International-sponsored event on Globalisation, and speaking to a Yorkshire Conservative Political Centre breakfast on Thursday on a Europe of Nations.In between times, he has a full diary of meals with influential media folk, when he is not kinnocking from one television studio to another. Much the same is said of Gillian Shephard, the Education Secretary.The Vulcan himself, John Redwood, will not get to the conference rostrum, of course, because he did have the nerve to challenge Major last summer. Furthermore, though they plan a robust defence of their record, the rival claims of Stephen Dorrell at Health and Malcolm Rifkind at the Foreign Office - "wets pretending to have dried out" - are not taken seriously. "Despite Herculean efforts, he has not been seen to deliver," is the verdict of one MP.Peter Lilley wins marks for his handling of the DSS, but "doesn't catch the imagination". But they do not have votes, and though the parliamentary party - which has - will be more right-wing after the election, his ambitions do not score where it matters. He is one of the few Cabinet ministers who can make ordinary people laugh.Like Portillo, the Home Secretary Michael Howard has been stumping the constituencies for months, winning standing ovations from audiences sometimes amounting to hundreds.