Leading article: Mr Howard's decision exposes the infirmity of the Conservatives

THAT MICHAEL Howard has wearied of the Conservative front bench is not surprising, even if it is rather worrying for both the Opposition and its beleaguered leader, William Hague. Mr Howard's retirement makes it quite clear that many senior Conservatives no longer hold out much hope of victory, and return to ministerial office, at the next general election. It also leaves the Conservatives without any of their big guns from the Major years. Douglas Hurd, Chris Patten, Michael Portillo, Michael Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke: none of them now remains on the front bench to contest New Labour's mastery of the political landscape.

Perhaps Mr Howard deserves a little more time to watch the baseball he adores. This newspaper opposed almost everything he ever did as a minister, but he has served his party, and the governments of which he was a member, with the intelligence and loyalty that his often abrasive populism sometimes obscured.

It was Mr Howard's misfortune to become the symbol of all that went wrong with the Conservative project. First he was the ruthlessly efficient hard man, as local government minister driving through the Thatcherite poll tax, a measure that showed just how out of touch the Iron Lady had become. Then, when he was home secretary under John Major, his rants against "liberals", refugees, illegal immigrants, single mothers and almost anyone else he could blame for rising crime figures, summed up the Major years of confusion and muddle. Initiative after initiative hit the rocks, as the judges, the prison service and even the police turned against Mr Howard's "tough" regime.

Most recently, Mr Howard has experienced the frustration of the barren Hague years. Performing with precision, well-directed indignation and aggressive attacking fervour in his dissection of the Foreign Secretary's many blunders, he has nevertheless made little impact on his opponent, the weakest senior member of the Cabinet. Mr Howard is the best example of that impotent, invisible hard work that characterises Mr Hague's Shadow Cabinet.

The Conservatives have thus been robbed of another experienced operator - Mr Howard's inability to perform convincingly on television, and his identification with the Tory past, having eclipsed their real long-term interests. There are able younger Tories in the ranks, Dr Liam Fox at constitutional affairs and Theresa May as Shadow schools minister among them, who need more time before they are exposed to the pressures of the top jobs; Mr Howard's retirement may deny them that. The foreign affairs post, vital in the Tory civil war over Europe, needs someone with some weight and standing to fill it, and such figures are not conspicuous in the Parliamentary Conservative Party. All in all, Mr Howard's departure is one more sign of the infirmity of that once-proud party.