Conservatives come up short in Britain

LONDON: Fifteen years after the ouster of Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Conservative party is still struggling to find a winning formula. Party leader Michael Howard announced yesterday his intention to resign after he failed to turn popular discontent over Iraq into an election defeat of Prime Minister Tony Blair. Like Blair, Howard supported the military strike in Iraq. And although he added more than 30 seats to the party’s 160 in the last Parliament — their first significant increase since 1997 — Howard could not attract enough voters for an all-out election victory. That challenge will be the critical test for his successor as the party prepares for its fourth leadership contest in eight years.

“I’ve said that if people don’t deliver, they go. And for me, delivering meant winning the election,” Howard said after his party’s third straight election defeat. Conservative party members met Friday to discuss possible successors. “The Conservatives flatlined yet again,” said John Curtice, political analyst at Strathclyde University, noting the share of the popular vote had only risen by half a percentage point on the disastrous 2001 election. “There has been no significant improvement in the Conservatives’ strength. They have to find a leader who has a strategic vision, who can come up with an image for the party.”

An early front-runner to emerge was David Cameron, a former company director elected as a lawmaker in 2001. Close to Howard, and promoted as a policy adviser last year, he has the backing of senior party figures, including Treasury spokesman Oliver Letwin, a Conservative insider told The Associated Press on condition he not be named. Lawmaker Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former foreign secretary who held ministerial positions from 1979 to 1997, is another possible contender. He called Friday for a serious debate on the future of the party and its priorities. For much of the 20th century, the Conservatives were an unstoppable political power yet the party’s popularity slumped in the closing years of Thatcher’s rule and under her successor John Major.

A series of scandals, party infighting over Britain’s role in the European Union, an unpopular local tax and a bungled currency crisis that destroyed the party’s reputation for economic competence all contributed to its demise. Blair defeated Major in 1997 during a landslide election victory, repeated in 2001, which pushed the party’s new leader William Hague to resign. Iain Duncan Smith followed and failed to make a mark. He was succeeded by Howard in November 2003. Howard, a witty, incisive former Cabinet minister and fierce orator, is credited with pulling the Conservatives back from the abyss.

But he has failed to overcome the perception that the Tories represent outmoded values. His aggressive, populist election campaign that focussed on slashing immigration prompted accusations he was pandering to xenophobia. It appears he successfully reached out to core Conservative voters, but failed to attract significant fresh support. William Jones, a political analyst at Manchester University, said the Conservatives were still regarded as the “nasty party” — a phrase coined by former party chairwoman Theresa May.

He said the party must transform its image and recapture some of the centre ground so skillfully dominated by Blair since he shifted his traditionally socialist party to the right to woo the middle classes. “They are seen as too right wing, too intolerant,” said Jones. “They need to reinvent themselves.” Howard, 63, said he would stay on as leader until the party decided on a successor. Conservative lawmakers have complained over a system where grass roots party members have the final say. It was unclear how soon a new leader would be chosen.