'A PROTESTANT, if he wants advice on any matter, can only go to his solicitor." So said the wise and witty Benjamin Disraeli, Britain's first Jewish prime minister. This weekend there's a second in the making. His name is Michael Howard, but as far as Tony Blair is concerned, his name is Nemesis.

A few weeks ago, I said Tony Blair was the toughest politician in the world. That was then, this is now. As we all learn in life, no matter how tough we are, there is always a high noon when we come face to face with someone a shade tougher. And I believe that Tony Blair has met his match in Michael Howard.

Howard can beat Blair at the next British general election. Most of the British media don't know this yet. Conservative papers hailed him as a safe pair of hands, an improvement on Iain Duncan Smith, a careful caretaker until someone more more charismatic comes along. But none of them had the bottle to say he could beat Blair at the next general election.

But he can. Because anything that Blair can do, Howard can do better. Blair convinced the middle class they could trust him to be as conservative as John Major. But Howard can do this even better - and as a bonus he can secure the support of the upwardly mobile working class because, unlike the posh Blair, he came up the hard way.

The son of Romanian immigrants, Michael Howard was born in 1941, in Llanelli, Wales, a background that shows when he says "peeple" for "people" and, even more adventurously, "cunstable" for "constable". At Cambridge he was a star debater and further sharpened his forensic style in John Major's government on the hapless Labour shadow minister who shadowed him in first in Employment and then in Home Affairs - that is, Tony Blair.

Although Blair will be apprehensive about facing Howard's hard questioning at the despatch box, he and Howard have much in common. They are both true believers in the power of politics to change the world. As conservatives you could hardly put a playing card between them. Blair believes that responsibilities bring rights and Howard believes that rights bring responsibilities.

But Howard has the edge over Blair because he is not afraid to say the awkward things about the three big issues - immigration, tax and crime - which, deep down, are what worries Middle England. And Middle England now includes the upwardly mobile working class which hates the left wing of the Labour party almost as much as - well, almost as much as Tony Blair who is, increasingly, its prisoner because of Iraq.

Howard appeals to the deep conservatism of the new British working class. Like the old working class, it also believes you earn your bread by the sweat of your brow and that criminal bosses should only come out of jail when they are old, not reformed. But because he has street cred - he is a lifelong Liverpool supporter - Howard can say the hard things Middle England wants to hear without coming across like some apoplectic old aristocrat denouncing the poachers.

Critics complain he looks dour, but frequent exposure to television and radio will dispel some of that and reveal the attractive private persona. Because, believe it or not, Howard is both tough and tender. He is regarded as a real romantic by his intimates and certainly had charm enough to snaffle the stunning model Sandra Paul.

Life with Howard can't be bad because Sandra has held on both to him and to her looks, and in her mid-60s stands out in any crowd. She too has street cred, and got a lot more when she was mugged outside their home and had her rings torn from her fingers, an experience not likely to have mellowed Howard's view that violent criminals ought to disappear from public view for a long time.

But behind the charm, Howard has character. Like all Jews, he has learned the need for fortitude. Anti-Semitism, carefully disguised, is not dead. Also alive is its favourite metaphor - the linking of Jewishness with darkness, which goes back to Judas going out into the night. When the left-wing press wanted to damage Mandelson, the Guardian did not shrink from calling him the "Prince of Darkness".

Likewise, when Anne Widdecombe, a Catholic, said there was "something of the night" about Howard, she was not simply talking about his skin tone. She was sending forth an age-old signal. To the shame of the Left, that signal was greeted with far too much glee in Guardian circles where anti-Semitism cross-dresses as anti-Zionism.

Paradoxically, I believe that the "something of the night" jibe will do him good at the polls. It sets Howard apart from the tinsel glitter of Blair spin which makes the public so suspicious, and sends out that slight chill that makes a statesman look serious. That chill convinces voters that he will be tough on crime, but not so tough on the causes of crime as to send their taxes through the roof.

Does any of this matter to us? Yes, it does, and not merely in Northern Ireland where Blair has blotted his copybook badly. After all, we might ask, where was the vaunted spin machine when it was needed most - to sell De Chastelain's decommissioning?

But a Howard victory would have other implications. More and more, the Irish middle class shares the same socio-economic attitudes as the English middle class. A British general election is a barometer of the political priorities in these islands. If Howard beats Blair by cutting taxes and crime and cracking down on illegal immigrants, these will be the big issues here too.

As a bonus, Howard is more likely than Blair to treat Sinn Fein statements in the spirit of Disraeli who, on receiving an unsolicited manuscript, would reply: "Many thanks, I shall waste no time reading it."

- Eoghan Harris