MICHAEL Howard's election as Conservative Party leader has confirmed all my worst fears about the Tory Party's lurch to the right.

Tory MPs and MEPs have called him the champion of Conservative values.

Well, this is the man who brought in the Poll Tax and believed it to be "fair" but voted against the New Deal, which has brought so many jobs to our area, and the National Minimum Wage because he said it was "extreme and absurd".

He says he has changed but has clearly committed himself and his party to the extremist policies of his predecessor, cutting £2bn from the NHS to subsidise private medical insurance, taking another £2b out of education and giving it to the private sector and scraping the New Deal.

If these are Conservative values, then heaven help us if they ever get back into power.

REG PRICE,

Worcester.