YET another attempt to "break with the past", and yet more voter-friendly words from the Conservative party leader, Mr William Hague, this week as he endeavours to "break free for the future" and consign the massive defeat of the 1997 election to distant memory.
The "new" Tory party that Mr Hague will launch at the Conservative spring conference in Reading this morning will wear its "caring" credentials on its sleeve. New Tories will not disown the past, but neither will they rake over past mistakes, constantly apologising for the errors of Mr John Major's administration, and they will "not spend time refighting the last election".
Part of the "moving on" strategy will involve greater concentration on issues of concern to voters, such as representing "mainstream" opinion opposed to the euro.
Mr Hague and his party have spent a great deal of time over the last two years steering a course between eating humble pie and searching for a firm platform from which to attack Labour. Its shifting policy on the euro and its failure to inflict any serious damage over Labour sleaze, for example, have won the party leader little credit with the voters, despite some excellent performances at the dispatch box.
The Tories also appear to have recognised that just as their ideas are in need of a dramatic revamp, the shadow cabinet could also benefit from a change of personnel. The decision by the shadow foreign secretary, Mr Micheal Howard, to quit the front bench, expected this summer when Mr Hague reshuffles the shadow cabinet, provides him with greater freedom to juggle the Tory pack.
Mr Hague said on the BBC Today programme yesterday that although the key change would be in Tory attitudes, "of course we have to change some people as well. I have to bring some new people on".
In that event several senior Tories who served in Mr Major's government could find themselves in the firing line, with the likes of the shadow home secretary, Sir Norman Fowler, and the shadow trade and industry secretary, Mr John Redwood, looking particularly unsafe.
The Conservative party denies that Mr Hague's words are a reflection of voter apathy towards key figures associated with the 1997 defeat.
"It is not a test of the current line-up. It never has been and it never will be," a spokeswoman insisted, stressing that the party was "readjusting, refocusing, and it doesn't matter who is the spokesman". But clearly there are significant changes in the air.
"It does require our party to be listening. It requires it to be caring. It requires it to talk about the future and not the past, and be forward-looking, not nostalgic," Mr Hague told the Today programme.
"We have to change the political battlefield. People thought the Conservative party was mainly about economics. But now we have to recognise that quantity of money is only part of quality of life and the Conservative party has to show that it relates to those things too."