9 OCTOBER 2004, Page 36

Is the Right wrong?

From P.G. Urben Sir: Is Michael Gove a Conservative in a real sense (Tower to the people', 2 October)? Conservatives form their own judgments; they do not have Great Helmsmen, and certainly not foreign ones. Gove reverences George Bush, Also Giuliani, though zero tolerance is of the same coinage as banning everything. Conservatives do not impose their own systems on others by force (which is what regime change boils down to). Leftists, be they communists, Napoleonists or French revolutionaries, do (as may Islamists).

Clove is too certain of everything. Certainty not only can be wrong; it usually is. And what does he seek to conserve? He writes much of progress, but that is a cantrip of the 1960s youth-cultist lefty seeking universal upheaval.

P.G. Urben

Kenilworth, Warwickshire