"Say what ever else you like about a Conservative Britain, but at least a Conservative Britain will still be Britain."
With that patriotic promise Mr William Hague yesterday started his attempt to kick-start a Conservative revival in Britain, with a general election possibly just eight months away.
Despite falling support in the polls, the Tory leader unveiled his pre-manifesto policy statement declaring that his party had "listened and learnt", trusted "the instincts of the British people", and was once again ready to govern.
"Believing in Britain," he said, offered "a striking new social agenda for Conservatives based on one very simple Conservative principle - Freedom". Setting out his plans for radical welfare and pension reform and the "endowment" of the country's leading universities, pledging to free inner cities of the blight of 1960s tower blocks and estates, and promising a "no holds barred" war on crime, Mr Hague told a packed press conference in central London the new Conservative social agenda would devolve power to local people and institutions.
But it was the defence of Britain's parliamentary institutions, and the country's "right to govern itself" which formed the centrepiece of Mr Hague's rallying cry. The hope clearly is that this will represent the so-called "clear blue water" between Labour and the Conservatives at the general election, widely expected to be held in May.
However with Mr Hague's "guarantee" to reduce the burden of taxation gone - and with details of Tory proposals for tax and spending still to be spelled out - Labour was to intensify the battle over public services with its charge that a Conservative government would mean spending cuts of some £17 billion.
"Extraordinarily," said Mr Hague yesterday, "the Conservatives will be the only major party fighting the next election determined to stop the surrender of our most precious right as a country - the right to govern ourselves."
Offering an apocalyptic vision of a disappearing nation, the Tory leader continued: "By a combination of deliberate act and complacent failure to act, within a decade, perhaps less, many of the things that make our country a country, that make our nation a nation, that make Britain "Britain", could have disappeared. And there we would all stand, the generation that threw away the rights and independence that so many of our countrymen lived for and sweated for and died for."
Pressed whether he really believed Britain could disappear, Mr Hague said people were "sick of our powers being given away" to Brussels. He maintained his "Sterling guarantee" could only be for the 5-year term of the parliament being elected, and that his proposal to legislate to protect reserved powers - which he likened to the German constitutional court - would not be in conflict with existing EU treaties. The proposed new law would be designed to curb the power of Brussels over key policy areas including defence, taxation, health and education.
Other key policy pledges yesterday, included the scrapping of existing Local Education Authorities, direct funding of schools through a per-pupil fee, with school Heads and Governors having complete responsibility for school management and parents empowered to change school management which fails to deliver. The central plank of policy for higher education is the plan to "progressively endow universities for the future so they are no longer dependent on government funding". A Conservative spokesman last night said it was wrong to describe this as "privatisation" of the universities.