Tories will win the next election says confident Hague

William Hague today predicted the Conservatives will win the next election - and put Whitehall mandarins on notice for sweeping changes.

In a display of confidence, Mr Hague, who is Tory deputy leader in all but name, revealed senior civil servants have been told of key decisions that an incoming Conservative administration would expect to take.

As despair spreads among Labour MPs over Gordon Brown's ailing premiership, Mr Hague said: "It is likely that we are going to be able to win the next election...I put it no more strongly than that."

The former Tory leader spoke out a day after a poll showed that David Cameron could walk into No10 next year with a landslide Commons majority of 186, seven more than Tony Blair in 1997.

In an interview in The Times, Mr Hague added: "However much opinion polls go up and down, there is a mood of 'this is long enough of a Labour government'."

Mr Hague, who as Conservative leader was defeated in the 2001 general election, also told of the eagerness among Tories to regain power but also stressed they realised the daunting scale of the task ahead.

"We have the right mixture of excitement - when you have lost three elections it is quite exciting," he said. "But there is also a sober atmosphere, because if and when we win we will have the worst financial inheritance of any government in peacetime."

Foreign Office civil servants had already been told to prepare for a "national security council" to include the foreign, home and defence secretaries. "This is one of the things we would expect them to be prepared for when we come to office," he said.

Signalling a move away from Mr Blair's "sofa-style" of government, he said the council would be a decision-making body and its staff would come from the Cabinet Office secretariat.

Laying out a cornerstone of foreign policy, Mr Hague said a new Tory government would be an "active, energetic and engaged member of the EU".

On the other hand, he stressed that the Conservatives would be prepared to derail the new EU Treaty by holding a referendum on it, possibly even if it had al-ready been ratified. Such a post-ratification poll could be included in a Tory election manifesto. Reaching out to Barack Obama's new US administration, Mr Hague argued that Britain "owed" it support for the battle against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Asked if British troops were likely to be still in the war-torn country at the end of a first Tory term in office, he added: "They will be if we're getting somewhere. We're not going to succeed in Afghanistan if people think we're going to walk away every five minutes."

On public service cuts, Mr Hague stressed they could hit the Ministry of Defence but gave a pledge that his party would not abandon plans to upgrade the Trident nuclear deterrent.

A poll for the Standard on Monday showed a 9.5 per cent swing from Labour to the Tories in London, which would lead to a gain of at least 14 seats in the capital, including Dagenham.

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