It's like a sort of gladiatorial thing, isn't it?"
At lunchtime the Tory chief - in what proved to be his last prime minister's questions as leader - attacked the government over crime and Europe, two key Tory touchstones. With the hours ticking down to his vote of confidence, Mr Duncan Smith played it safe with a demand for a referendum on the EU constitution. He was cheered by his own backbenchers, however, Mr Duncan Smith failed to land a real blow on the prime minister in what was a competent though hardly rousing performance. This morning he took to the airwaves in a frantic last-minute bid to shore up his support ahead of tonight's vote. The embattled Conservative leader gave interviews to GMTV, BBC Breakfast and the Radio 4 Today programme at the start of a gruelling day which most predicted would end in his resignation. This morning Mr Duncan Smith was defiant, insisting that even a one-vote majority would be enough to save his skin. But the Conservative leader did begin publicly speculating about what would happen if he loses his job in today's vote. "Of course, I contemplate what happens next and the answer is, I get on with my life if I don't succeed," he told GMTV. The Tory leader's last-ditch line of defence was that a contest for the party would be disastrous - taking months while the government flounders over the Hutton report, foundation hospitals and the Queen's speech. "We have the opportunity to decide whether or not we want to plunge the party into internal warfare while this government gets away with absolute murder," Mr Duncan Smith told BBC Breakfast.