TORY leader Michael Howard yesterday ended the political career of his former deputy party chairman, Howard Flight, after remarks he made were seized on by Labour to claim the Conservatives had a secret agenda to cut public spending.

Mr Howard said: "Howard Flight will not be a Conservative candidate at the next election."

That appeared to rob one of the party's most senior figures of the safe seat of Arundel and South Downs, which even at the last election enjoyed a Tory majority of 13,704.

Mr Howard's intervention capped a day of drama at Westminster, which had begun with the publication in The Times of leaked extracts of a speech Mr Flight had made at a meeting on Wednesday of the Conservative Way Forward group.

There, Mr Flight - a former Tory Treasury frontbencher and one of the architects of the party's James Review of public spending - said the review report had been "sieved" to make its contents politically acceptable.

He said the party could go further than the £35bn of planned savings on Labour's projected expenditure once it was in power.

Tony Blair and Cabinet ministers jubilantly seized on the leak to press home their case that the Conservatives planned a massive spending clampdown, and wrench the pre-election campaign firmly back onto their own territory.

Mr Howard, having accepted Mr Flight's resignation as deputy Conservative chairman on Thursday night, then snuffed out the Tory MP's political ambitions.

He gave an impromptu TV interview and issued a statement to the Press Association saying: "We will not promise one thing before an election and do something else after an election. We will not say one thing in private and another thing in public.

"Everyone in my party has to sign up to that. If not, they're out. Howard Flight will not be a Conservative candidate at the next election."

Mr Flight later protested in broadcast interviews that he did not intend to stand down as a Tory candidate - but party HQ made clear he had no choice.

Mr Flight said he believed he had the support of his local party and called for constitutional processes to be observed.

But a Tory spokeswoman said the party whip had been withdrawn from the former high-flier, meaning he could not be an official candidate.

There were signs earlier last night that Mr Flight's constituency association would not let him go without a fight.

But later, Angela Litchfield, chairwoman of the Arundel and South Downs Conservative Association, confirmed that a new candidate would be sought.