Hague: Tories ready for election

Fighting talk: Conservative leader William Hague

Conservative Party leader William Hague has said the Tories are ready for a general election whenever the prime minister wants to call it.

Mr Hague was speaking before his party's conference in Harrogate where senior party figures are expected to rally party activists for a possible spring poll.

We are ready for an election whenever it comes

William Hague

Arriving at the conference, Mr Hague said the party was not put off by opinion polls favouring Labour.

"We are ready for an election whenever it comes," he said.

"We fought the European elections two years ago much further behind in the opinion polls than we are today and we won those elections, so we know we can win," Mr Hague added.

Europe and the economy are likely to dominate the agenda at the conference.

Shadow chancellor Michael Portillo will tell a fringe meeting it may be time for the Bank of England's inflation target to be cut from 2.5% to 2%.

The government has described the proposal as a recipe for higher interest rates.

Michael Portillo wants inflation target cut from 2.5% to 2%

But Mr Portillo will say that Britain's inflation rate had remained below the 2.5% target set by Gordon Brown since April 1999, adding: "There is growing evidence that this is a structural rather than a temporary phenomenon.

"Manifestly, if that is the case, it would be in the national economic interest to reduce the inflation target in order to lock in long-term low inflationary expectations."

He was due to ask John Flemming - a former chief economic adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England - for a report on the impact of such a cut, to be ready before the election.

It would be in the national economic interest to reduce the inflation target

Michael Portillo

Mr Portillo's announcement was being made to Conservative Mainstream, in his first speech to the centre-left grouping of pro-Europe and One Nation Tories.

But Tory insiders last night insisted that there was no significance in his choice of audience, playing down suggestions that he was using the event to stake his claim as a leader of the party's moderate wing.

Mr Portillo was later due to set out the Tories' tax-cutting agenda in a keynote speech to the Conference, in which he was due to stress the dangers he perceives in Mr Brown's plans to increase public spending by more than the overall growth in the economy.

That will inevitably lead to tax rises, he will argue.

No further details of the £8bn-worth of tax cuts which the Tories have promised within the first three years of a Conservative government are expected to be announced.

'Undisguisable contempt'

Tory chairman Michal Ancram is also set to unleash one of the party's most strongly-worded and personal attacks yet on the Labour leadership during the conference.

The party's general election candidates - last night told by leader William Hague to prepare for an imminent poll - will hear Mr Ancram describe his "contempt" for Tony Blair and New Labour.

Michael Ancram will attack New Labour

And he will accuse Labour of cynically stripping politics of its integrity and seeking to neuter the Houses of Parliament in a bid to give his government unfettered power.

Speaking to an audience of 1,500 delegates Mr Ancram was to say: "I, and surely more and more of us each day, regard (Mr Blair) with undisguisable contempt.

"There is now a growing stench at the very heart of New Labour, from the mendacity of Mandelson to the arrogance of Irvine to the brazenness of Blair.

"Blair is hell-bent on neutralising the House of Lords and undermining the House of Commons so that neither can hold his government to account."

Mr Ancram will also name the Tories' three key campaigning issues for the election as the currency, the constitution and the countryside.