Hoon: Cameron is turning voters’ heads
Europe minister Geoff Hoon has admitted that David Cameron has mobilised the Conservative party into a viable alternative to New Labour.
His comments come as Tony Blair returns to Britain after his summer holiday, facing criticism for his handling of the crisis in the Middle East and ongoing issues surrounding when he will step down as leader.
Although Mr Hoon claimed that “every government in history” had faced similar problems with the electorate, he admitted voters were looking at the Conservatives in a wholly different light.
“We have got to be realistic about it that the Conservative party looks and feels very different to the one that, say, Michael Howard led,” he told Today.
The minister insisted, however, that “a whole range of issues” were to blame for voter discontent, and not just the prime minister’s increasingly US-led foreign policy.
And Mr Hoon said that the Tories still had a long way to go before they represented a direct challenge to the Labour government.
“What the country is looking for is any substance to their sound bites, any real detailed policy, the document published this summer by the Conservative party was empty of any kind of specific policy commitments,” he explained.
He added: “Therefore what is important for a Labour government taking difficult decisions on difficult decisions both internationally and domestically is to demonstrate actually that we have the competence, the experience and moreover that we are capable of demonstrating new ideas and new approaches running into another general election.”
But Mr Hoon stressed that it was at the prime minister’s discretion to decide when to handover power.
