LONDON - Author Helen Fielding has accused Britain's opposition Conservative Party of hijacking her popular Bridget Jones character in its bid to promote marriage and the family. Fielding's best-selling book, 'Bridget Jones's Diary,' is about the romantic disasters of a 30-something single woman. In a letter published last week in The Daily Telegraph, Fielding took exception to a senior Conservative's remark that Bridget Jones was a Tory at heart because she hopes to marry and settle down.

David Willetts, the party's spokesman on work and pensions, invoked the fictional character in a speech in which he extolled the value of marriage and family life. While many young people are now marrying later, he said, increasing numbers of people follow Bridget's hit-and-miss romantic career before finding the right partner. 'If anything, we have higher hopes of marriage than ever before. We are taking longer to find the right partner, but still searching for that person with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives - just ask Bridget Jones, ' said Willetts.

Fielding protested that Willetts 'has got the whole thing completely back to front,' because one of the biggest threats to Bridget Jones' relationship with Mark Darcy 'was the horrifying discovery that he voted Tory.' At the end of the novel, Bridget gets her man. Bridget, she said, 'is not just on a desperate quest to settle down. Like all self-respecting modern women, she is struggling to balance her post-feminist independence and economic power with the human, not just female, need to love and be loved.'