WELL, 'ere's a turn-up fer the books, as Cockneys might say. A nice young boy, son of a Jewish immgrant, comes into the world as Mordechai Hecht, and rises to the Conservative Party leadership as Michael Howard.

Mr Howard put it about, not once but on several occasions, that his blessed grandmother had met her end in Auschwitz, which seems to have become an increasingly fashionable way of having died; while his aunt and uncle had miraculously eluded Heinrich Himmler's "gas chambers". His aunt escaped them not once, but three times, even as the gas had begun to "hiss" into the chamber, or "because the gas had run out"; etcetera.

NOW, oh, calamity, researchers appear to have discovered that his grandmother, like her husband, died in Romania, not Auschwitz at all. Tho' note that this brave newspaper puts it the other way round -- she died in Auschwitz, and his father lied (for no visible reason) in saying she had died in Romania.

Because surely Mr Howard did not just decide to profit from the genuine suffering of others? -- To join the multitudes who have found it so profitable to dine out on the Holocaust,

Public opinion polls in the UK have revealed that the overwhelming majority of the British electorate (67 percent at the last count) have stated that they will never vote for a Zionist prime minister of England.

Time may of course change all that. But that factor, the latent anti-Semitism of the English, need no longer concern is: what matters now is if one liar, Tony Blair, is to be succeeded by another. That seems increasingly unlikely. .

The Tory leader's grandmother died in Auschwitz but at the time his grandfather was living in London.

However his father, who anglicised the family name after settling in Britain, claimed they both died in his native Romania. In an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper, he [Michael Howard] said: "I have speculated on the reason and I suppose one possibility is that my grandfather might have entered Britain unlawfully."

The Conservative leader, whose new hardline policies on immigration have attracted criticism, says the reason his father gave incorrect information will remain a mystery.

The revelation follows his announcement of proposals that would see MPs set a limit on immigrants who would be selected through an Australian-style points system.

He said:"As for my grandfather, there might have been some irregularities about his status." Mr Howard decided to reveal the mystery after investigative journalist Michael Crick began looking into his family background the paper reports.