ACCORDING to a Conservative councillor, air pollution in Yarm High Street has increased by 380 per cent in the past four years.

It is because cars stop-start their way down the bank, crawl through the main street, and cough sporadic-ally across the River Tees before accelerating away.

Around 4.45pm any day, congestion is at its worst.

Stop the stutter of traffic completely so a politician can have a look-out, and the back-up is bound to be horrendous.

So Michael Howard was greeted by a cacophony of car horns when he stepped out at 4.45pm yesterday into the drizzle of Stockton South.

"This isn't going to win him many votes at this time of day," said a member of the Tory faithful.

Then Suzannah Clarke opened up. The Labour-supporting soprano sang about Tory cuts to the tune of Verdi's La traviata, flourishing to a finish with Vincero ("we shall win") by Puccini.

"Would you vote for someone singing like that?" asked a horrified boy from Yarm School holding a Conservative placard.

"It's opera, dear," replied his mother, fondly. "It's actually quite nice."

So amid the electoral cacophony, there was some musical harmony.

Mr Howard was still buzzing from Liverpool's remarkable victory in the European Champions League the previous night.

"A fantastic performance," he enthused. "It just shows you what a team that's the underdog, not the favourite, can do against the odds."

The winner in Stockton South will be favourite to be electoral champions. In 14 of the 16 post-war contests, the seat has been won by the Government. This time, James Gaddas needs a 10.28 per cent swing to the Tories if he is to unseat Dari Taylor - nationwide, the Tories need a 10.3 per cent swing to form a majority government.

Mr Howard said: "You can vote for Mr Blair and reward him for eight years of broken promises and vote for five years of more talk, or you can vote Conservative for a party that wants to do things for hard working people who play by the rules and pay their dues."

As well as school discipline, cleaner hospitals and controlled immigration, Mr Howard spoke of creating elected police commissioners to ensure the local constabulary is "responding to the people's priorities", and of scrapping unelected regional assemblies.

"The assemblies haven't brought down any decisions made by the national government," he said. "They have sucked up decisions to a regional level. We would return those powers to local authorities.

"And if local authorities want more clout there's absolutely nothing to stop them banding together, doing things together - but these regional assemblies are completely unnecessary and an expensive piece of bureaucracy."

He said that John Major's government had created 30,000 manufacturing jobs in the North-East while, under Mr Blair, 75,000 such jobs had been lost.

"The more you burden British business with red tape, regulations, bureaucracy and tax, the more difficult it is for it to win orders and create jobs," he said, "So we would lighten those burdens."

With that, his dark blue Jaguar began picking its way through the traffic. The election depends on whether, at the ballot box, the people of Yarm are tough on congestion and tough on the causes of congestion.