Cameron: Not one ounce of complacency
Conservative party leader David Cameron says his party is taking nothing for granted before the next general election.
Opinion polls have consistently given the opposition party a double-digit lead throughout 2008 and the Tories are widely expected to beat Labour at the next election, due by May 2010.
After a string of bad by-election results for the governing party, shadow foreign secretary William Hague said the Conservatives were the most likely to win. Mr Cameron made clear there was still more to be done, however.
“The election is up to the members of the public to vote and you can’t make any presumptions about the way they’re going to vote,” he told reporters.
“If you look at what the Conservative party is doing, there is no complacency. We are setting out our policies, working very hard, campaigning all the way through the summer.”
The opposition leader said the Tories had “come a long way” and “made some really important steps forward” but insisted that “we’ve got a long way to go to convince people that we’re ready”.
He added: “There is a really hard programme of work for the Conservative party to go through to turn what is a good polling position into an election victory.”
Mr Cameron will hold a ‘preparing for government’ session at the Conservative party conference this September, a move he defended as being appropriate for an opposition party.
He evaded a question about the current situation in the Labour party, following speculation over a potential leadership challenge against prime minister Gordon Brown.
“I have no idea what is going to happen in the Labour party and I rather suspect neither do any of you,” he said.
