Prime Minister Tony Blair?s lieutenants launched a scathing attack on Michael Howard yesterday before he is even ratified as leader of Britain?s opposition Conservative Party.

Cabinet minister Lord Falconer sought to portray Howard as an unreconstructed right-winger responsible for unpopular policies in the 1990s ? a sign perhaps that the government views him with more concern than his recent predecessors.

?Michael Howard is a pretty clearly defined politician. There is, I think, something of the right about Michael Howard,? the constitutional affairs minister told BBC Television.

Howard has a tough reputation from his uncompromising rule as home affairs minister in the 1990s. He was famously described by a colleague as having ?something of the knight about him?.

The Conservative Party, whose history boasts such towering figures as Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, has floundered in opposition since 1997 when Blair?s Labour Party crushed it in the first of two landslide victories.

In a desperate bid to avoid a third humiliation in the next election, probably in 2005, Conservative lawmakers last week voted out their ineffectual leader Iain Duncan Smith and scrambled to unite around veteran right-winger Howard.

With all the party grandees? backing, Howard will be anointed this week unless a maverick opposes him.

Falconer said Howard pioneered the punitive poll tax in the 1990s, pushed a million people out of work and was so disliked by 1997 that he disappeared from that election campaign.

In a sign of a coordinated attack, Blair?s leader in Parliament, Peter Hain, levelled precisely the same charges on another television channel.

Hain at least admitted that Howard was a tougher prospect for Blair. ?The Tories don?t have a leader any more who is an embarrassment and in that sense it?s a difference challenge for us,? he told Sky Television.

But both he and Falconer said Howard would cut spending on vital public services by 20 billion pounds ($34 billion). In a newspaper interview, Howard said he would run on a low tax platform.

Conservatives hope Howard, an astute lawyer, will succeed where Duncan Smith spectacularly failed ? to hold Blair to account on anything from the public services to the Iraq war.

Blair has had an awful year. His public ratings have plunged after the war, which most Britons opposed, and voters are angry about the state of transport, education, hospitals and crime.

Despite that, the Conservatives remain behind in the polls.

Howard is an undoubted political heavyweight who gave the young Blair a rough ride in Parliament when the Prime minister was an up-and-coming home affairs spokesman.

Conservative home affairs spokesman Oliver Letwin said Blair?s allies were scaremongering.

?I?ve no doubt the Labour Party will try various strategies over the next few days,? he told Sky Television. ?They won?t be plausible. Michael has made it absolutely clear that he is leading this party from the centre.?

Mike Peacock