Full text: Ken Clarke speech

Here is the full text of Kenneth Clarke's 19 July 2005 address to a Tory Reform Group reception:

The Conservative Party is in danger of becoming a natural party of opposition.

We have just been defeated badly in the third successive election and this time we lost to an unpopular prime minister leading a not very popular government.

Our party has to win the next election if it is to avoid spending decades out of power.

We must win back young, educated aspirational voters to rejuvenate our support and to widen our political base.

Younger professional business people, key public servants, ethnic minorities and others, whose values are instinctively Conservative, have drifted to Labour and the Liberal Democrats and need to be won back before we become irrelevant to their political choices.

If Gordon Brown were to replace Tony Blair as prime minister in this Parliament he will not be easy to beat at the next general election.

He has protected his reputation by avoiding close involvement with the invasion of Iraq and he has carefully steered clear of every other unpopular controversy that the Blair government has aroused.

He is an experienced formidable campaigner who will need to be challenged on his economic record as well as his broader domestic agenda if he is to be defeated in today's presidential electoral politics.

We must look and sound like a credible government in waiting by the time we are campaigning against Brown in the second half of this Parliament.

We need a detailed intelligent policy agenda on the central political issues of the economy, health, education and pensions.

No party will be entrusted with office until it has satisfied the public that it has better focused policies than the government on those four issues at least.

Slogans inspired by focus groups on subjects of less central interest to the public will not get us over the problem of any weaknesses in our approach to the key mainstream issues.

The Conservative Party most desperately needs to win next time to save itself from being irrelevant to the politics of the next generation and to save the country from a fourth term of a Labour Government.

A shadow cabinet of political heavyweights who can present policies of depth and vision on the mainstream issues of the day is urgently required to put the party back on the track to government again.

A confident and hopeful Conservative Party which has earned the respect of all sections of British society in the early part of this 21st Century with both policies that meet the challenges and a shadow cabinet of substance would finally deliver a real alternative to a Labour Government and stop the now seriously encroaching threat from the Liberal Democrats, who are increasingly presenting themselves as the only acceptable opposition to this government.

As you know, I am considering whether to stand for the leadership of the Conservative Party.

The more I consider my options, the prospect of my becoming a candidate by the autumn becomes more attractive.

I am listening to my parliamentary colleagues.

Whatever I decide, I know this, that it would be a real privilege to be the person who could lead this party from opposition to government at the next election.