What now for Howard?

Analysis
By Nick Assinder
Political Correspondent, BBC News website

An honourable second place was probably the most many Tory supporters, even MPs, expected from this election.

Tories have some big choices to make

After the best part of a decade tearing themselves apart, the party pulled itself together and finally presented a united, coherent platform for the poll.

Much of that was down to the realisation that not to have done so would have probably spelt disaster, even terminal decline.

But much of it was also undoubtedly down to Michael Howard's experienced and firm leadership.

The question now is where do the Tories go from here - do they continue building or return to their old destructive ways?

Because, despite what many believed was the best campaign, with Michael Howard regularly setting the agenda and keeping Labour on the back foot, it didn't work.

Stop the rot

Mr Howard can comfort himself with the thought that he probably achieved enough to head off any suggestions that he is personally to blame for the election failure.

Indeed, when he became the surprise successor to Iain Duncan Smith in 2004 at the age of 62, most believed his only task was to stop the Tory party destroying itself.

It was near impossible to find a Tory MP who would privately express any hope of Mr Howard actually winning the election for them.

Howard ran a good campaign

His job was to stop the rot and, at best, whittle away Labour's huge majority.

So, many will be happy that he has done the caretaking job he was charged with.

But the question even back then was whether the Tories needed to go through some sort of painful re-birth similar to the one carried out by Labour in the 1990s, first under Neil Kinnock then most importantly by Tony Blair.

Global trends

Should the party finally decide to continue what many perceive as a drift to the right, away from the centre ground so successfully colonised by Labour?

With Tony Blair's troops holding much of that old ground, it is certainly difficult to see the Tories moving to the overcrowded centre, although it is perfectly possible to see a leader in the mould of ex-minister Kenneth Clarke, if not the man himself, attempting to regain that one nation territory.

Or should the party go radical and move on to a new generation with new ideas - the "out with the old guard, in with the new" scenario?

There are certainly individuals like frontbenchers George Osborne and David Cameron who are seen as amongst the brighter hopes of the future. That future may have arrived.

But whoever the leader might eventually be, he or she will have to have a new vision to revitalise the Conservatives.

They would need to spot and seize on changing social, economic, domestic and global trends that, by addressing them first, might succeed in showing them to be modern and relevant.

One of the tests of that may well come with any referendum on the EU constitution and/or negotiations over Britain's relationship with Europe.

This is no small task but many Conservatives believe the blunt realities are that, if they fail in that task, there is little to encourage voters to turn back to the party.