Hague vows to win over voters with `bold new social agenda'

The Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, promised Britain "a bold new social agenda" yesterday, as he again vowed to win over…

The Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, promised Britain "a bold new social agenda" yesterday, as he again vowed to win over voters increasingly disaffected with the Labour government.

The party chairman, Mr Michael Ancram, opened the Conservative conference here with an upbeat challenge to Mr Tony Blair to call an immediate general election.

"We are ready to let the people decide. Are you, Mr Blair?" he challenged, as he told Conservative representatives Labour were "in disarray, their cover blown, their image shattered and their hollowness exposed".

Seeming to caution his party against any hint of triumphalism following the government's recent difficulties, Mr Hague had earlier said the Conservatives would have to demonstrate during their conference that they offered a real alternative to Labour.

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"Millions of people know they are fed up with Labour," Mr Hague told the BBC. "They want to know what the alternative is."

He then set about that task, promising to "put the heart" back into Britain's inner cities, as senior figures from the party's liberal, pro-European wing warned he could only gain entry to Downing Street by reclaiming "the centre ground" of politics.

Noting that winning elections in Britain requires constructing a "coalition" of some 14 million voters, a former minister, Mr Stephen Dorrell, warned Mr Hague: "You won't get 14 million votes if you only talk to one section of the centre-right point of view in this country and the Conservative Party, at its best, is a broad-based centre-right coalition of a variety of different points of view."

Reacting sharply to Mr Ancram's insistence that the party line on the euro was settled, another senior MP, Mr Ian Taylor, insisted he would have to embrace a broader range of opinion if he really wanted to be the chairman who led the party back to power.

Mr Hague showed determination to move the debate away from Europe and on to the broader policy front yesterday as he targeted inner cities and tower blocks. He said a future Conservative government would appoint a special regeneration minister to cut through red tape and ensure speedy action across areas such as planning, crime, health and education.

Promising to tear down tower blocks, Mr Hague told a press conference: "While it is true that many city centres have enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, the residential areas that surround them have too often remained places of great deprivation and poverty."

The huge exodus from inner cities to the suburbs over the past 30 years had left behind areas blighted by high unemployment, crime, poor schools, drug problems and bad housing, he said.

"These social problems are most evident in the vast concrete tower block estates that scar our urban landscape," he said.