Howard: don't back UKIP

Michael Howard today launched a last-ditch attempt to stem Tory desertions to the UK Independence Party with a withering attack on its "extremist" policies.

He said that only the Conservatives represented the "mainstream majority" of British voters' worries about the growing power of the EU.

His remarks follow mounting alarm in Tory ranks at the rising support for the anti-Brussels party.

Speaking in Southampton, Mr Howard said that Labour and the Liberal Democrats were at the other extreme because they were prepared to hand more power to Europe against the public's wishes.

Mr Howard risked giving UKIP more publicity by referring to it by name in his speech. "Britain's interests are best served by staying in Europe - but by using our influence to make the EU confront its failings and become more tolerant. That is what the mainstream majority in Britain want," he said.

"But the fringes at both ends of the European debate are united in one thing. Both give the British people the defeatist message that we cannot have a flexible Europe. They argue that we have to put up with what we are given or leave altogether. Both sides peddle this myth for their own political ends. And they are both wrong." He warned that backing such parties would represent a "wasted vote".

Mr Howard said that pulling out of the EU would put jobs at risk, but the powers of Brussels had to be curbed in the meantime. He reiterated his calls for control of fishing policy and overseas aid to be restored to Britain.

The Tory leader decided not to use some of the more colourful descriptions of UKIP used in recent days by Conservative Central Office. A leaked Tory briefing paper this weekend denounced the party as being made up of "cranks and political gadflies".

But some Tories are extremely worried by the surge in publicity and support for UKIP, which has recently recruited high-profile names such as Robert Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins.

A recent poll found that of those certain to vote in next week's European elections, 18 per cent would back UKIP, putting it ahead of the Liberal Democrats for the first time. Fears that the anti-EU party could tap into broader support were underlined when four Tory peers signed a letter of support-for its anti-Brussels stance. The four were suspended from the Conservative Party, but one of the ringleaders, Baroness Cox, said that "a very large number" of Tories backed the hardline stance of UKIP.

Conservative strategists are worried that the anti-EU party will split the eurosceptic vote and put in danger the Tories' hopes of achieving a resounding victory over Labour on 10 June.

Tensions within the Conservative Party were heightened yesterday when former cabinet minister John Redwood urged the leadership not to indulge in name-calling against the UKIP.

Mr Redwood said that instead it would be better to argue that the party was a "fifth column for federalism" because its MEPs would get in the way of other candidates who could make a difference.

Mr Howard today steered clear of what his aides described as a Labour trap of lurching to the Right on Europe. The Tory leader stuck by his "live and let live" approach to a multispeed EU, which allows a hardcore of federal states to integrate while Britain steers its own path.

Senior Tories worry that any attempt to ape UKIP would reopen a row with pro-Europeans such as Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine.