The Conservative election campaign was left struggling to get back on track yesterday after the row between central office and sacked MP Howard Flight.

The Arundel and South Downs MP said he had received a legal opinion rejecting the right of party leader Michael Howard to bar him from standing for the party at the next election.

Instead, he insisted that only a meeting of local constituency party members could determine his future.

Flight also appears to have gained enough local support to force an emergency meeting of the constituency association to hear his plea to stay on.

However, the FT reports that senior Conservatives remain confident of their right to sack him.

And the Tory leader again rejected suggestions that the situation in the constituency was deadlocked.

"The way we do things in the Conservative Party is set out in our constitution and the rules, and everything I have done is in accordance with the constitution and the rules," Howard told a press conference.

A Guardian leading article says that Howard's move was an "error of judgement".

The paper says Flight's suspension "suggests a leader uncomfortable with dissenting opinions within his party".

While struggling to shrug off one constituency row, the Tories were also hit by another yesterday.

The suspension of the entire Slough party organisation followed comments by the party's former candidate in the constituency warning of Britain's "Catholic subjugation" in the European Union.

The candidate at the centre of the row, Adrian Hilton, accused the party's high command of acting like "little dictators".

The Times and Independent say that as a result of these dual problems, a grassroots rebellion is spreading and questions are being asked of Howard's judgment.

Meanwhile, questions over whether a Labour supporter was responsible for taping Flight's comments and precipitating the row remained largely unanswered yesterday.

Labour election chief Alan Milburn said the source of the story was a matter for the Times newspaper, which first reported it.