HOWARD FLIGHT’S political career was ruthlessly ended yesterday by a Tory leadership which fears that his secretly recorded remarks could derail the election campaign.

The disclosure by The Times of Mr Flight’s comments to a Thatcherite meeting, where he boasted that the true scale of spending cuts was being concealed from voters, had caused his summary dismissal as the party’s deputy chairman.

But yesterday, as Labour said that the revelations marked the turning point in the campaign, Michael Howard threw him out of the parliamentary party and banned him from standing as Tory candidate in Arundel & South Downs.

The Conservative leader issued a statement saying: “Howard Flight will not be a Conservative candidate at the next election.”

Amid scenes of growing disarray, Mr Flight insisted that he would not stand down and claimed the support of his local party. The MP told the Radio 4 PM programme that he had had a “polite” conversation with Mr Howard over standing down.

Mr Flight said: “He indicated that was his view and I indicated that it would of course have to go through the appropriate constitutional process because I was not going to withdraw as a candidate.”

But a Tory spokeswoman said that because the whip had been removed from Mr Flight, he could not stand again under the party’s colours. “Every candidate has to have their election papers signed by our nominating officer. If that signature doesn’t go on those papers, that person doesn’t become a Conservative candidate.”

And his attempt to cling on ended when Angela Litchfield, the constituency chairman, issued a statement saying: “We are all extremely sad at what had happened. However, we support Michael Howard and in the interests of the Conservative Party we will be selecting a new candidate shortly.” The constituency association will now have about two weeks to find a new candidate to fight the general election if it is held on May 5, as expected.

Arundel & South Downs is one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. In the 2001 election, Mr Flight had a majority of 13,704 — slightly down from 14,035 in 1997. As for the MP, his options now appear to be limited to standing as an independent.

Mr Howard embarked on a damage-limitation exercise, saying: “Let me tell you about today’s Conservative Party under my leadership.

“We will be totally straight with the British people. We will do what we promise. We will make no promises we cannot deliver. We will not promise one thing before an election and do something else after an election. We will not say one thing in private and another thing in public. Everyone in my party has to sign up to that. If not, they are out.”

Mr Howard is understood to be furious that Mr Flight, the self-proclaimed “workhorse” behind the party’s policy of slicing £35 billion from government spending plans, had ignored a warning against making unguarded remarks before the Conservative Way Forward meeting on Wednesday night.

The tape-recording obtained by The Times threatens to overshadow the imminent announcement of Tory tax proposals. Mr Flight said that these were likely to include raising the thresholds for income and inheritance tax. He said that the promise last month to offer pensioners a council tax rebate was “nakedly political”.

But, in previously unpublished remarks, Mr Flight added: “What we have to say about raising thresholds will be equally clear and crude.”

In another damaging passage, he identified “the great Lynton Crosby” as the architect of Mr Howard’s recent campaign success, saying that this was because the “communications we’ve sent have been clear and crude and so forth”.

Mr Crosby, the Australian political strategist imported to run the Tory election campaign, has become increasingly controversial in recent weeks as the party has grabbed headlines with policies such as a crackdown on gypsy camps.

Tony Blair and a clutch of Cabinet ministers seized on The Times’s disclosures to press home their claim that the Conservatives planned huge cuts.

“The fundamental point is that the Conservative Party has not changed. An economic plan that even had the spending cuts they are admitting, never mind the ones they are hiding, would take us right back to the economic risks, the under-investment in public services, the social division that people wanted to leave behind in 1997,” the Prime Minister said.

Alan Milburn, Labour’s election co-ordinator, said: “The wheels are coming off Mr Howard's bandwagon. His party has been exposed for what it is — ideologically obsessed with cutting public spending.

“The reason why Michael Howard should be rattled is not because Howard Flight blurted out the truth.

It is because the reality of his leadership is being exposed. The Conservative Party is extreme because thatis what Michael Howard has allowed it to become.”

The Conservative leadership emphased that Mr Flight was part of an “unrepresentative Thatcherite rump”.

But Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, provided further evidence of an ideological rift in the party, saying: “We’re extremely shocked that Howard Flight has been sacked for expressing what the vast majority of taxpayers believe — namely that the Government spends too much and taxes us too highly.”

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