The York man who would be king Tory

NO sooner has one Yorkshire MP walked through the Tory leadership door marked exit than another is trying to enter it. Whitehall inquisitor David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden and a politician said to be of "unquenchable ambition" could become the dark horse of the Tory leadership battle.

The former Minister for Europe under John Major, who threw his hat into the ring for the Tory leadership today, spent the last Parliament as chairman of the powerful Commons Public Accounts Committee, having shunned a front-bench job under William Hague.

That rebuttal of Hague now seems like a canny decision. As chairman of the PAC - a role he once described as the best job in Opposition - he was able to harry the Government and build on his reputation as a man who does not mince his words, while at the same time sidelining himself from the civil war among would-be Conservative leaders and insulating himself from blame for the failure of the Conservatives to make more inroads into the Labour majority in last month's General Election.

The York-born MP made good use of the post, frequently hitting the headlines with his public castigation of failures in government and Whitehall. His cross-party committee denounced as "farce and fiasco" the shambles at the Passport Office in 1999.

It also held that blaming the pilots of a Chinook helicopter for the Mull of Kintyre crash in June 1994 - which killed 29 people including 25 intelligence officers - was "unsustainable".

The 52-year-old MP's bid to become Tory leader is bound to raise a few eyebrows - in his own party no less than in the Labour camp. His working class background is hardly the stuff of Tory dreams.

Brought up by his mother Elizabeth Brown in a prefab council house in the Walmgate area of York, he took his name from his adoptive father Ronald Davis, a print worker.

Ronald Davis was, according to one Sunday newspaper, a trade union shop steward - and his father Walter, the MP's grandfather, a Communist activist who took part in the 1930s hunger marches.

Mr Davis's mother Elizabeth married Ronald Davis when the MP was just four, and the family moved to South London.

They lived, according to a Sunday newspaper, in a council flat in Tooting - just a few miles from where that other Conservative with working-class roots, John Major, was brought up around the same time.

He had a tough upbringing in south London and still bears the scar on his upper lip from a crowbar attack in Brixton.

His bid to become Tory leader should not be quite the surprise it has been to many. A tough, shrewd and dynamic operator, he was once described by the Tory MP turned Times columnist Matthew Parris as the "next Tory leader but two".

The father-of-three first became politically active as a student, cutting an imposing figure even then as chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students.

He read molecular science at Warwick University and studied management at Harvard, going on to enjoy corporate success in his thirties as a director of Tate and Lyle and President of Zymaize, a loss-making Canadian sweetener manufacturer which he turned into a gold mine.

A man with brawn as well as brains, he served as an SAS reservist to help fund himself through college, before entering Parliament in 1987 as MP for Boothferry.

His rise through the Tory ranks was steady. He became Parliamentary Private Secretary to Francis Maude - now a supporter of Mr Davis' rival Michael Portillo for the Tory leadership - in 1989, a Government whip in 1990 and junior minister for public service in 1993. As a Government whip he earned himself the reputation of being the "Government's bovver boy" and the party's "unflinching bone-crusher". He described himself as the "Eurosceptic for Maastricht" when he helped browbeat colleagues into voting for the Maastricht Treaty.

From 1994-1997, he was Minister for Europe in the Foreign Office: a role in which he demonstrated "a natural and amply-reciprocated dislike for the endlessly seductive lore and culture of the foreign office," according to Donald Macintyre of the Independent.

With his background in big business, and his ministerial experience under John Major that remains untainted by any association with William Hague's front bench team, there are those in the Tory party today who think the Eurosceptic MP is just the man to give the Tories the severe jolt it needs.

The man himself readily admits to having been branded a "charming bastard" and a "master of constructive obstructivism". He does not suffer fools gladly, and according to the Evening Press' parliamentary correspondent James Slack, once told a local newspaper reporter: "I measure my success by column inches in The Times not in the local rags".

But according to his campaign manager, David Maclean MP, he will bring honesty rather than spin to politics.

"He will be a clean break," Mr Maclean said today.

"I think he will bring a new style into our leadership, and into our politics he will bring honesty rather than spin."

The general view at Westminster is that Mr Davis did himself a favour by distancing himself from William Hague's shadow cabinet by taking on the Public Accounts Committee chairmanship.

The result was that he gained respect on both sides of the House and was one of the few Tories who prospered in Opposition in the last Parliament.

He received a ringing endorsement from the late Alan Clark who described him in his diaries as "a good, strong chap, very much our sense of humour".

Mr Davis is a tall, commanding figure who lists mountaineering, parachuting and flying light aircraft among his more athletic pursuits.

He also has a fondness for political satire.

"You might think that Yes Minister is a comedy," he says, "but I see it as a training film."

Updated: 10:51 Tuesday, June 19, 2001