Top Tories at war over election

Senior Conservatives are alarmed by a breakdown in relations at the highest level of the party's general election team.

Insiders have revealed that the party's co-chairmen Liam Fox and Lord Saatchi are barely on speaking terms and at loggerheads over key campaign decisions. Both are said to resent Michael Howard's decision to bring his own election guru into Tory HQ.

The arrival seven weeks ago of Lynton Crosby - an Australian credited as the genius behind the four election victories of his country's prime minister John Howard - has led to squabbling over slogans and strategy.

One casualty of the overhaul is likely to be the "Timetable for Action" slogan, unveiled only two months ago at party conference and which featured heavily in Mr Howard's main speech. Mr Crosby is considering shelving the phrase when

the full campaign begins next

year - even though it has already been printed on tens of thousands of leaflets.

One Tory frontbencher branded the campaign phrase, coined by Lord Saatchi, as "crap". He added: "There is a lot of disquiet among my colleagues at the slogan."

Another row is over the 10 "words to remember", also devised by Lord Saatchi: "More Police, Cleaner Hospitals, Lower Taxes, School Discipline, Controlled Immigration."

But an insider said Mr Crosby will recast them as Five Key Commitments instead. The

insider,

one of Mr Crosby's growing number of supporters, said: "They meant nothing. You might as well ask people to remember a nursery rhyme. Five key commitments is obviously much clearer."

Mr Crosby, 48, has recruited a small but enthusiastic fan club among staffers and MPs who see him as an equivalent of George Bush's election mastermind Karl Rove. Described as a master of the "dark political arts" he has a reputation for aggressive campaigning.

Based in the new Tory Party headquarters in Victoria Street, he has a direct line to Mr Howard, bypassing Lord

Saatchi and Mr Fox. Bickering has increased with a spate of polls showing the Tories marooned on about 32 per cent, barely higher than under former leaders William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith.

Mr Fox is said to be the biggest casualty of the changes demanded by Mr Crosby. While Lord Saatchi still has the ear of Mr Howard, Mr Fox has found himself squeezed out.

The Scottish MP - regarded as a potential successor to Mr Howard - is under pressure to relinquish control of his greatest innovation, a computer called Voter Vault, which stores 900,000 names and addresses of voters in 160 marginal seats, with personal details for canvassing and mailshots.

Mr Crosby is understood to want a much more focused campaign, based on winning a smaller number of core seats.

But critics suspect his aim is to abandon dozens of seats which the Tories would need to win to take power and focus on gaining just enough to safeguard Mr Howard from a postdefeat leadership challenge.