MICHAEL HOWARD’S election guru has told him that the Conservatives have no hope of winning the next general election.

The crushing blow from Lynton Crosby, the Australian campaign expert hired by Mr Howard at great expense to bring about a surprise Tory victory, came as Mr Howard attempted yesterday to put immigration and asylum at the heart of the party’s election campaign.

The opposition leader was accused of desperation for his personal pledge to restrict immigration to Britain, to be presented in a speech today as a Tory vote-winner.

The Times has learnt of an extraordinary power tussle at Conservative campaign headquarters after Mr Crosby contradicted advice from Lord Saatchi, the party co-chairman, who believes that the Tories should fight to win, or at least deny Labour a majority.

Mr Crosby has concluded from the party’s private polling, showing Labour with a comfortable six-point lead, that the Tories cannot win the next election, expected on May 5. He believes that Mr Howard should concentrate on a face-saving attempt to increase his strength in Parliament by 25 to 30 seats.

His findings are similar to those in a Populus poll last weekend, which suggested that Labour is heading for another 160-seat landslide and that the Tories may lose seats. The poll, along with the Tories’ private data, have torpedoed persistent claims from Lord Saatchi that the Conservatives are doing far better in the seats they need to win to secure a majority at the next election.

The battle of wills between Lord Saatchi, the advertising expert who helped Margaret Thatcher to win three elections, and Mr Crosby, an architect of John Howard’s four successive election victories in Australia, has created a febrile atmosphere at the party’s headquarters only weeks before the campaign is expected to begin. A senior Tory source told The Times last night: “It is terrible for us out there. The polling suggests at best we can win up to 25 seats. But Saatchi is telling Howard that the election is all to play for and that we should fight to win the 165 seats required to give us a majority.

“The fact is that in the marginals we are actually losing ground. Crosby is saying it is madness to fight to win 165 seats when we can’t win 65.”

In public Mr Crosby agrees with Lord Saatchi’s view that they have to be seen to fight to win the election but in private he is trying to persuade Mr Howard to use his resources on carefully targeted seats, rather than spending millions of pounds on a national advertising campaign. He wants to use the party’s new call centres to bombard the most marginal constituencies.

The revelation of the bitter dispute at the party’s campaign headquarters comes only a week after the defection of Robert Jackson, a former education minister, to the Labour Party.

Last month The Times reported that a power struggle within the party’s high command was spiralling out of control. An initial report that Mr Crosby had marginalised the role of Lord Saatchi was understood to have triggered “near meltdown” in the relationship. The Tory peer sought to restore his authority by issuing an email to all staff informing them that Mr Crosby had apologised. Mr Crosby was said to have been thunderstruck when he read Lord Saatchi’s email.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the Tories could more than halve the current rate of immigration and send back thousands of bogus asylum-seekers. The Conservatives used a full-page newspaper advertisement to spell out their plans to impose an annual limit on immigration, curb work permits through an Australian-style points system and introduce 24-hour security at ports.

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, accused Mr Howard of basing his policy on “the ill-informed propaganda of some of the more demented anti-immigration groups”.

Charles Kennedy, interviewed on the BBC One Breakfast with Frost programme, said: “It is another indication of the desperation within the Conservative Party as the general election looms large.”

Ruth Kelly, the new Education Secretary, told the same programme that Labour would announce its own plans on the issue in the coming weeks.

The advertisement, headed “I believe we must limit immigration”, was signed by the Tory leader, emphasising his personal commitment to the issue. He acknowledged that the Tories will face accusations of playing the race card in the election, but insisted that their stance was not racist.

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