08/09/2005

Fox launches Tory leadership campaign

Dr Liam Fox has become the latest Conservative MP to launch a bid for the party leadership.

The shadow foreign secretary launched his campaign with a speech at the Hillside Clubhouse in north London, an advice centre for people with mental health problems.

Dr Fox said he wanted to see a “forward-looking confident Conservative party”, which concentrated on the concerns of the public, rather than the party itself. He said: “The thing that most people can tell you about the Conservative party in recent years is that we have leadership elections. What we need to focus on is the real agenda of the people in the country.”

He said that the party needed to reconnect with voters and offer them a “distinctive vision” of what the party stood for.

Dr Fox’s speech focused on a number of issues, including lower taxation, family values, strong defence, scepticism about the European Union, mental health issues, crime and global warming and the environment.

Dr Fox is the third Conservative to formally announce their intention to run for leadership of the party when current leader, Michael Howard, stands down later this year. Former Chancellor Ken Clarke and former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind have already launched their leadership bids.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis is still widely regarded as the frontrunner in the contest, although he has not officially announced his intention to enter the leadership race.

Both Mr Clarke and Mr Davis attacked the government’s economic record on Thursday.

In a speech at the Sir John Cass Business School in London, Mr Clarke attacked current Chancellor Gordon Brown and accused him of ‘squandering’ the economic legacy he had left him in 1997. He said: “Far from building on the strong economy he inherited, growth and investment in our economy have been below what my party achieved before 1997. The Chancellor has failed to restrict public spending to what the nation can afford. His tax policies have not been the ‘fair’ policies that he promised.”

Mr Davis did not deliver a speech on Thursday, but wrote an article in ‘The Scotsman’, criticising Labour’s record on the economy and stating that lower taxes and less regulations were necessary for British businesses to compete against the economies to countries such as China and India.

Mr Davis was visiting Edinburgh airport in order to discuss security.

(KMcA/SP)

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