Howard urges party to unite behind new leader

Michael Howard has urged the Conservative party to unite behind his successor in his farewell speech at the party’s conference in Blackpool.

Mr Howard said that his successor had a simple task – “to regain for our party the trust and respect of the British people”. However, he warned that it could not be achieved by waiting for the “political pendulum” to swing back to the Tories. He said that no political party had “the divine right” to rule and said that the party had to win back the trust of voters, by providing a “clear, confident and consistent message” of what the party stood for.

He appealed to MPs and activists to display discipline, avoid in-fighting and show that a new leader could be elected without “bitterness and backbiting”.

Mr Howard, who led the party for two years, said: “Let’s unite behind a new leader – not just for a year or two, but for a whole Parliament, even when the going gets tough. Unity and discipline are essential.”

The outgoing leader also stressed that the party must hold true to its core values of personal responsibility, free enterprise, fair play and a sense of nationhood, but said that they must be applied in a “modern contemporary way”.

He said: "At the next election, people born in 1990 will be able to vote for the first time. They were born in the last months of Margaret Thatcher's Premiership. They were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Their youth has been shaped by the Internet and the iPod, by cheap flights and mobile phones.

"It has been overshadowed by the destruction of the Twin Towers and the bombing in London, Bali and Madrid. And it has been fired up by impatience for action on climate change and desperate poverty in Africa.

"So we must talk about what matters to them in today's world, their world, the world as it is, not the world as it was."

Mr Howard said that the Conservatives still had a long way to go. He said: "It will be hard - picking yourself up after defeat always is. We'll need stamina and comradeship. We'll need to show respect for each other, as well as for our opponents. We'll not always agree, but when we differ we must do so as friends, not as foes. And we must build afresh, acting with humility and in the knowledge that our party has to earn the privilege of government.

"Hold your heads up high; be strong and of good courage; unite behind a new leader; and then fight to build a better Britain. Go for it."

David Davis, Ken Clarke, David Cameron, Liam Fox and Sir Malcolm Rifkind are all in the running to succeed Michael Howard as Conservative party leader.

(KMcA/GB)