Vince Cable has called for an end to feuding within the Liberal Democrats and insisted again that he was not involved in a plot by one of his close friends to get Nick Clegg sacked.

The business secretary has now given a second interview from China stressing that he is committed to Clegg and does not want to see a change of leader for the Lib Dems.

The row blew up after the business secretary's friend Lord Oakeshott commissioned secret ICM polling in five constituencies suggesting the party would do better under Cable and that all the incumbent Lib Dems were set to lose their seats. This was leaked to the Guardian by an unnamed party. After he was revealed to be behind the polls, Oakeshott then resigned and claimed Cable knew about four of the damaging surveys that undermined the Liberal Democrat leader.

Explaining his position, Cable chose his words carefully, while stressing there was "no disloyalty whatsoever". He said he was not aware of the secret polling in Sheffield and Inverness, the seats of Clegg and Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury. However, he did know about some of the other surveys.

"To be absolutely clear, I'm supporting the party leader. People are putting around the story that there is some division on that," he told the BBC. "There is not and I've made it absolutely clear from the beginning of this week that there is absolutely no leadership issue. We have a united team. We clearly have to recover from the very difficult election. I'm part of that team and I will be supporting the leader on that."

Speaking on BBC Sheffield on Thursday, Clegg sought to draw a line under the divisions and made it clear he did not think Cable was involved.

"I spoke to him yesterday. He clearly didn't know a thing about a poll being conducted in Sheffield," said the deputy prime minister. "Sheffield Hallam has been very, very critical about that happening and as I said yesterday I just think, clearly we had some really, really bad election results last week. That of course quite rightly means there are a lot of questions and soul searching and debate about exactly what we do as a party over the next year."

Later on LBC 97.3 Radio, Clegg confirmed he had no knowledge of the Oakeshott polling but said he would not have expected Cable to tell him about those that were not conducted in his own Sheffield constituency.

He added: "I fully expect people to try and suggest that there are endless plots and conspiracies – I don't believe that for a second. Vince is now standing secretary of state for business. He and I have worked together for years and years and years and we're going to continue to work together in harness as part of a really strong Lib Dem team in government."

A number of party grandees have taken to the airwaves to give Clegg their support. Sir Graham Watson, a longstanding MEP who lost his seat last week, said nobody believed Cable was trying to undermine Clegg, though he added: "Of course it's the case that sometimes we can be as treacherous by our failure to stop something as we can by being involved."

One missing part of the jigsaw is what happened when Oakeshott discussed some of the poll results with Cable and Lib Dem MP Tessa Munt, whose Somerset constituency of Wells was surveyed.

Asked about the poll by the Guardian, Munt said she could not comment because she was on holiday and "does not know what's going on". Her Twitter feed, however, suggests she attended a business networking event in her constituency on Thursday morning.

Julian Huppert, the Cambridge MP whose constituency was surveyed, is also believed to be on holiday, but his local association decided in his absence to hold a meeting on 13 June to "decide whether they can support Nick Clegg's continuing leadership or consider issuing a notice to the party to hold an election for leader".

Ian Swales, the Redcar MP whose constituency Oakeshott also polled, told his local Gazette that the results suggesting he would lose his seat were "based on a small sample and look very amateurish".

"Decades of Labour MPs and the neglect of the last Labour government left the steelworks closed and the whole area on its knees. I don't think people will forget that in a hurry," he said.

Oakeshott quit the party on Wednesday, warning that it was heading for disaster under Clegg's leadership. He resigned the day after being named by Cable as the senior party figure who had commissioned the surveys from pollsters ICM that showed Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Munt in Wells, Swales in Redcar and Cable in Twickenham were likely to lose their seats under the current leadership.

The surveys were leaked by an unnamed party to the Guardian after the Lib Dems lost hundreds of council seats and polled only 7% in the European elections, in fifth place behind the Greens, triggering suggestions from some Lib Dem MPs that Clegg should consider his position.

Oakeshott, who helped found the party, said Clegg had led the Lib Dems to "no roots, no principles, and no values". After stepping down, he also revealed that a fifth poll suggested Alexander was on course to come third to the SNP and Labour in his Inverness constituency.

Cable said he regretted his relationship with Oakeshott had "finished up in this way" but hoped his longstanding friend, whom he has accompanied on family skiing holidays, would reconsider his decision to leave the party.

Oakeshott said he would be taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords and urged fellow Lib Dems to heed the "evidence" he had shown them about Clegg's leadership. He also claimed the party – and others – had been involved in offering cash for peerages.

"A few stout-hearted MPs and peers, and hundreds, maybe soon thousands, of candidates, councillors and Lib Dem members all over Britain are now fighting constituency by constituency for a leadership election," Oakeshott said in a statement.

"I have tried to give them the evidence they need to make the change. I pray that they win, and that the right man, or preferably woman, is now elected to save the party."

Among those who have called for Clegg to think about his future are John Pugh, MP for Southport, Stephen Tall, the co-editor of the Lib Dem Voice website and almost 400 Lib Dem activists, including at least 28 councillors. Local groups in Cambridge, Winchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, among others, are shortly to hold meetings to discuss Clegg's future as leader.

Senior Lib Dems have rallied round Clegg, however. Giving a speech on international aid, the deputy prime minister brushed off Oakeshott's efforts to undermine him with "surreptitious" polls as "odd, to put it very mildly". Before the resignation, he had also signalled that Oakeshott would be disciplined.

A spokesman for the party said Oakeshott's decision to resign was "understandable in the circumstances". But privately, senior Lib Dem sources were much ruder about Oakeshott, who was a founder member of the SDP, a predecessor of the Liberal Democrats, in 1981.

"Matthew Oakeshott was the man behind the rather hamfisted attempt to destabilise the leadership," one source said. "He has failed and he has now resigned. Most Liberal Democrats will think that is a good thing. This is a lancing of the boil – Oakeshott has long been a malign figure in the party, pursuing his own malicious agenda, rather than do anything for the benefit of the party. Nowhere was this truer than him lavishing tens of thousands of pounds on slanted private polling rather than in helping friends and colleagues get elected."

Lib Dem sources maintain that Clegg's position has been strengthened by the number of senior party figures who have backed him in the wake of Oakeshott's efforts, including the former leaders Paddy Ashdown and Sir Menzies Campbell, as well as Shirley Williams and a large number of MPs.