Mr Iain Duncan Smith's campaign faced renewed questions over race yesterday following links between one of his supporters, an extremist right-wing magazine and a Tory club advocating voluntary repatriation of ethnic minorities.
As a Conservative MP, Mr Andrew Hunter, denied reports his name was removed from a list of Mr Duncan Smith's supporters over his links with Right Now! magazine and the Monday Club, the leadership contender insisted he did not hold extreme right-wing views and had fought to keep extremists out of the Tory Party.
The row erupted after Mr Hunter, who is deputy chairman of the Monday Club, which supports voluntary repatriation of ethnic minorities, insisted he had never been a member of Mr Duncan Smith's campaign team and therefore could not have been excluded from it.
The Duncan Smith camp also denied the reports, pointing out Mr Hunter had supported the parliamentary campaign and was not now an active member of the team.
The Right Now! magazine names Mr Hunter as a patron and it provides Internet links to extreme right-wing organisations in the US, but the MP distanced himself from its contents, declaring the publication and the Monday Club were the victims of "left-wing demonisation." He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The magazine doesn't have views, the magazine publishes articles. Those articles are written by academics and democratic politicians."
He also insisted he did not fully agree with the Monday Club's views on repatriation of ethnic minorities: "There is already a scheme in place for assisted passage. That is the scheme that I believe in, the policy that I support."
But the dispute forced Mr Duncan Smith's campaign to again stress he had turned down all invitations by the Monday Club to address its members and did not endorse its views: "Iain has never had any dealings with the Monday Club, he has never spoken to them, he has not asked for their endorsement."
Campaigning in Dorset, he was also asked about Edgar Griffin's expulsion from his campaign team and the party last week over links with the right-wing British National Party.
Meeting senior police officers in Dorset, Mr Duncan Smith said the Griffin affair was an embarrassment for the party but not for him. And he reminded his critics he had fought two elections against the BNP, including the last election against Mr Griffin's wife, who stood against him in his Chingford constituency.
"If there is one person in this party who has fought these people, it is me. I do not need any lessons from people who talk big but have not had to deal with them," he said.
Mr Kenneth Clarke, meanwhile, addressing party members in Oxfordshire, said the party was embarrassed by the Griffin episode and it was a good time "to get rid of the others like that."