Iain Duncan Smith has told critics in his party to ensure their own performance is "faultless".

The Conservative leader hit back at comments by the party's former chief whip, Derek Conway, who had warned of a leadership challenge at Christmas if Duncan Smith failed to put in a strong showing.

Speaking at the start of a weekend meeting with 125 Conservative MPs in Buckinghamshire, Duncan Smith issued a challenge of his own.

"I would like the whole party's performance to be faultless. The reality is that we are a unit and we have to go forward," he said.

The party leader also aimed to set aside Wednesday's resignation of Barry Legg as Tory chief executive, a move which brought to an end an embarrassing row. The appointment had caused a rift between Duncan Smith and the party's board of executives.

He also rejected claims that the row over the appointment and the call by Crispin Blunt for a leadership challenge showed the party was still divided.

"We are united. I think this is nonsense. I say to the media you've got to stop looking at this Conservative Party through any spectrum other than the reality that last week we demonstrated without any question that we are now the powerful building political force in the United Kingdom," he said.

"We are now the largest party in local government. We got more councils last week than the Liberal Democrats control in the whole of England, for goodness sake," he said.

Duncan Smith said the aim of the weekend was to set out the strategy behind his "Fair deal for Britain" campaign for the general election.

At the end of the weekend with his MPs he would "send them all forth for the next two-and-a-half years".

"Bonding or plotting are nothing to do with it. This is wholly to do with a series business of getting the party together to focus on how we defeat the Labour government and take on the Liberal Democrats and win the general election," he said.

Ahead of the meeting the Conservative leader had admitted that members of his party "don't love each other".

In an interview in the Spectator magazine, Duncan Smith said: "We just get on with each other. We are a party.

"Actually I think you've got to ask yourselves in the media why there is so much coverage of rows. The general public are really quite bored by these sorts of stories."

Media mischief on the day was limited to the revelation that Latimer House, where the conference took place, was formerly a top secret PoW interrogation centre during the Second World War.