London, England - The Catholic hierarchy last night joined forces with both Labour and the Conservatives to head off a political row over abortion in the coming election after the Archbishop of Westminster suggested that religion should play a larger part in British politics.
Michael Howard insisted he had not tried to make abortion an issue during a magazine interview and key aides stressed that it should remain a matter for MPs' consciences.
No 10 called for a "calm and rational" debate, but said Tony Blair has no plans to change current laws. Mr Howard said: "I don't decide what is an election issue, neither does Mr Blair. The British people will decide."
To underline his secular credentials, it emerged last night that Mr Howard had forced the resignation of Adrian Hilton as Tory candidate for Slough as a result of an article which suggested that voting for an EU constitution would be a vote for conspiratorial Catholic domination.
Remarks made by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in praise of Mr Howard's apparent call for a tighter legal limit on abortion - 20 weeks, not 24 - were heavily promoted by the Tory tabloids yesterday.
Issuing his normally politically neutral annual bishops' letter, the Cardinal called abortion "a very key issue" and said New Labour could not rely on "the notion that Catholics would be more in support of the Labour party because they were working class people".
Finding himself caught in a media crossfire, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor stressed that the issue is one of several he wants voters to consider - including world poverty and refugees.
But he later added that he would like to see religious issues - "not only the love of God but the love of our neighbour" - become more promi nent in Britain as they are in the US.
A less politically adept and cerebral figure than his predecessor, the late Cardinal Basil Hume, he appeared unaware that in the polarised debate between pro-life and pro-choice forces in the US, abortion has routinely been deployed as a "wedge issue" by Republican campaigns along with gay marriage.
There is no evidence that Mr Howard wishes to follow that path, though he was more ready than Mr Blair to contemplate fresh legislation because medical technology can now save babies at lower ages.
SPUC, the pro-life campaign which lost all its deposits when it targeted some MPs in 2001, is not repeating the strategy at the coming election. Yesterday Ann Widdecombe, a vocal Catholic convert, was the only Tory MP to push for a tougher line. Ironically, the media storm arose from an interview published this week - but conducted in January - with the major party leaders by Cosmopolitan magazine. All three expressed personal dislike of abortion, but only Mr Howard said he might vote for a 20 week limit.
Yesterday he stressed: "I did not make my comments in an interview with the Catholic Herald, I made them in an in terview with Cosmopolitan. I was asked a straight question and I gave a straight answer."
Mr Blair, whose wife and children are Catholics, was badly burned on the issue when he clashed with the late Cardinal Tom Winning in Scotland.
ยท Labour last night denounced the Tories for "preying on peoples worries" about self-defence against burglars but then failing to turn up to promote a bill on the issue.
Only one Tory, Patrick Mercer, who sponsored the backbench bill, came to the Commons to back it. As a result the legislation fell.