Come and join our party says Howard

Michael Howard hit the election trail today with a final rallying cry to Labour and Liberal Democrat voters to "come and join us".

His appeal, designed to counter charges of a "core vote" strategy aimed only at traditional Tory supporters, closed the last party conference before the expected general election next year.

"When I go round the country, I don't meet core voters or floating voters," he was expected to say. "I meet people, with hopes and dreams and ambitions."

In a symbolic move Mr Howard was planning to go straight onto the campaign stump, taking his battle bus to a key Tory marginal seat in Dorset.

Appealing directly to disgruntled backers of Tony Blair, he was planning to urge: "To those who voted Labour last time, who dream of a better life, who work hard, but feel let down, I say, come and join us.

"If you agree, whoever you are, whatever party you may have supported in the past, come and join us.

"And to those who have given up on politics, who do not believe that casting a vote will ever make any difference to their lives, I say, come and join us."

As part of the campaign blitz leaflets will be distributed to 11 million homes setting out exactly what a Conservative government would do from the moment it was re-elected.

Mr Howard will promise that within the first hour of a Tory government he will issue orders to stop political advisers telling civil servants what to do.

Within the first day, he will freeze civil service recruitment and set a date for the EU referendum. By the first month the Conservatives will introduce 24-hour surveillance at entry ports, restore the link between state pensions and earnings and begin a 5,000-a-year police recruitment drive.

His call to arms came after a four- day gathering in Bournemouth in which the Tory leader put fresh heart into his party but was accused by critics of failing to reach out beyond the ageing, loyalist audience in the hall. Mr Howard moved to counter the criticism with a closing speech that allies said marked the launch of a "big tent" strategy to attract new supporters as well as woo back disenchanted former Conservatives.

He was expected to appeal to families who had lost faith in government "to provide a good, local schools for their children, or a clean hospital when their parents fall ill".

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